Rule Bound

Last summer my neighbor up the road stopped me as I was walking past. “Me and Joanne got everything we need,” he said.  “We got enough money, we got a nice house.  We even bought a boat.  How come we ain’t happy?”  I was hard pressed to know what to say.  He went on to tell me how badly he felt that they had hardly taken their boat out at all since they had bought it.  It was a beautiful sunny day, it was early in the morning and the closest lakes aren’t even half an hour from his house.  I asked him if today might not be a good day to get out on that boat.  “We can’t,” he said.  “Today’s Tuesday.  We do laundry on Tuesdays.”