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Ben Johnson Day
Nov. 29th, 2014 06:27 pmMost Fridays I go to the jail to do some essay tutoring, and on the way I listen to Reggae Jam with Sunshine Girl on WTCC. A few weeks ago Sunshine Girl and the King (who's in the studio with her--he does a segment of soca music) were talking about Ben Johnson Day.
I at first thought it was Ben Jonson Day, and I was wondering why Jamaica should have decided to honor Ben Jonson.
Well, it hadn't. Ben Johnson Day, I discovered, is the Thursday before your Friday payday, when your money is at its lowest. On those days, the cupboard and fridge may not yield much to eat, so you may have to make do with porridge and salt fish, or bammy (which, when it gets stale, you have to soak in something like milk, if you're lucky, or water, if you're not--reminds me of the bread the folks on Nilt ate in Ancillary Justice).
No one is sure how it got that name, though one legend is that Ben Johnson was the name of an overseer in charge of bringing the pay packets in on Thursday night. Some associate the name with the Jamaican sprinter Ben Johnson, but others point out the term has been around a lot longer than the athlete has.
I don't know how Sunshine Girl and the King happened to be talking about it--I must have stopped for a coffee at that point--but I did discover that there's an old reggae song from the 1960s called "Ben Johnson Day," so maybe that's how.
You learn something new every day.
I at first thought it was Ben Jonson Day, and I was wondering why Jamaica should have decided to honor Ben Jonson.
Well, it hadn't. Ben Johnson Day, I discovered, is the Thursday before your Friday payday, when your money is at its lowest. On those days, the cupboard and fridge may not yield much to eat, so you may have to make do with porridge and salt fish, or bammy (which, when it gets stale, you have to soak in something like milk, if you're lucky, or water, if you're not--reminds me of the bread the folks on Nilt ate in Ancillary Justice).
No one is sure how it got that name, though one legend is that Ben Johnson was the name of an overseer in charge of bringing the pay packets in on Thursday night. Some associate the name with the Jamaican sprinter Ben Johnson, but others point out the term has been around a lot longer than the athlete has.
I don't know how Sunshine Girl and the King happened to be talking about it--I must have stopped for a coffee at that point--but I did discover that there's an old reggae song from the 1960s called "Ben Johnson Day," so maybe that's how.
You learn something new every day.
