Farewell to Monk

This weekend we hustled and bustled with a great many other people in our small historic town, enjoying Midnight Madness, which is basically a contest to see how many cars can be parked illegally in our parking-challenged town. We have attended Midnight Madness for several years now, and can say with some authority that this year a record must have been set, with cars parked on sidewalks, in driving lanes, on rooftops, in the river, etc.

This year we hustled more than usual in order to get home by 9 p.m. -- a far cry from midnight, we realize -- because that was when the series finale of Monk started. We have watched Monk with great faithfulness our entire marriage, shunning all obligations and invitations on Friday nights during the viewing season ("We regret that, due to a prior engagement, we cannot accept your most gracious invitation to dine at the White House this Friday. Feel free to invite us another time, just not on a Friday.").

We are more faithful in watching Monk than the mailman in his rounds (no offense to Jesse, our very pleasant and timely mail carrier), although I must confess that I do not like to watch the very beginning of each show, which usually consists of eerie music and someone being murdered in a particularly creative manner. I usually find something very urgent to do in another room during these few minutes, such as minutely examining my toothbrush for any sign of deterioration. After the dirty deed is done on the show I can safely return to the couch, and Joe tells me what I missed. His telling usually consists of "You don't want to know."

But now Monk is gone, and we are left with a great void in our Friday night entertainment schedule. We both may have to resort to examining our toothbrushes, or worse for Joe, playing "Bananagrams," which he detests but which does allow him to exercise his creative spelling skills.

On the other hand, positive things may come out of this change in our schedule. Over the years we've been watching Monk, we've noticed how eerily similar our behavior is to Monk's obsessive compulsiveness. As the opening song says, "People say I worry all time. If you paid attention, you'd be worried, too." Well, we've been paying a lot more attention since we started watching, and we are a lot more worried. Maybe now that the show is over, we can return to our pre-Monk state of being blissfully unconcerned about the many ways our world -- as the song further insists -- is trying to kill us.

So if anyone needs a couple of recovering obsessive-compulsive people to do something with on Fridays, we're available.