IN WITH THE OLD

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (01-19-23)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     I just wanted to take a second to wish everyone a happy and healthy new year. But now that I have you here, I could certainly waste more of your time than that. This is the moment to make a fresh start, let bygones be bygones, mend fences, take stock of the future and bury the past. Let's start with my New Year's Resolution of speaking only in clichés. Needless to say, that's the honest truth. Which is cliché code for: I just said something you don't care about, and it's the only thing I've said that wasn't a lie.

     We've been stuck in the house for months waiting for a good reason to test our immunity to all the bugs and viruses out there, and a New Year's Eve party seemed like the perfect opportunity to try to RSVP without the RSV.

     New Year's Eve this year was hosted by a couple who have diametrically opposing views about what kind of music is most appropriate for the occasion. She likes to dance to the hip-hop music of the day. He likes alternative rock and classic roll. They used to argue about it, and a satisfactory marriage is built on compromise. That way, NOBODY is happy. However, a STRONG marriage is built on the pretense of compromise. And so a Ludacris song starts and when she kicks off her shoes to dance, he kicks them under the couch and says Honey, I thought I saw some glass on the floor, so she disappears into the bedroom, and he switches to "Start Me Up" by the Stones and hits the floor but she returns and says Honey, they need help filling the Champagne glasses and "Start Me Up" is finished in 12 notes and it's back to Ludacris but he returns and says Honey, can you put the kids to bed and she says, Honey, the kids are 27 and 29, and so they retreat to neutral corners. The rest of us are nursing a sprained ankle from trying to dance to a fractured playlist.

     "Where's the remote control? We don't want to miss the countdown!" I shout. "Rick, it's only 10:15." Better safe than never than late than sorry, I always say. Actually that was the first time, but I'm auditioning clichés. It's important that you get the new year off to a timely start, otherwise, you'll be a few seconds off the whole year. It's so much more important than, say, the countdown to launching a rocket ship. If you miss liftoff by a minute or two, and you're late to Mars, you think they're not going to hold dinner for you?

     After the New Year has been safely rung in, and hands have been shook and people have been air-kissed, I park myself over by the dessert table to see who all is not really serious about New Year's resolutions. So many people set themselves up for failure. Make your promises easy to keep. I resolve to eat more chocolate in 2023, and I get right to it. And to watch more 1970s television. That sounds easy, but old shows where you can punch whomever you like and no one sues you AND they'll be knocked unconscious for 10 minutes are not a renewable resource, and I'm starting to run out of options.

     In the wee hours of a New Year's Eve party, I can estimate where the guests live within a margin of error of plus or minus three miles. The people who have already left by 12:02 live less than a half hour away. They have two countdowns, one to ring in the new year and the other for when their babysitter goes into overtime. The ones who stay until 12:47AM live within 15 minutes of the party, and they've nursed two-and-a-half drinks over four hours, to maintain a degree of sobriety that makes their conversation just out of reach of those who are still left at 2:00AM, who live close enough to wobble home to their last known address. The party we went to was in Croton-on-Hudson, up a big hill within spitting distance of the river, and if you don't pay attention and stumble the wrong way, it's Croton-IN-Hudson for you.

     If you were the first baby born in 2023, we missed you and your parents at the party. They had to time it just right so they can be interviewed on television. Your husband, who is also your Lamaze coach, was trying to get you to hit it on the nose. "Okay BREATHE, Honey, but don't breathe very much, it's only 11:00. Are you sure your water broke? How DOES water even break? It's a liquid, for god's sake." And to the last baby born in 2022, I know you just missed the cut, but in a few years it'll be water under the bridge. And that was my first cliché of 2023.