Have you made your preparations for New Year’s Eve?  Are you excited about New Year’s Eve?  Are you looking forward to New Year’s Eve?  Well, neither am I.  Perhaps I am just getting grumpy in my old age, but I’ve never had a desire to go to New York or anyplace else to see the ball drop.  (If I want to see a ball drop, I can just wait for the Bengals playoff game on Sunday.) I guess I’ve never had much of a desire to do anything on New Year’s Eve.  In fact I cannot remember the last time I even had plans on New Year’s Eve.  

I remember as a kid New Year’s consisted of 1) staying up until midnight which was something I usually did not get to do, 2) watching Guy Lombardo & His Royal Canadians on television which was something I did not especially want to do, and 3) eating Cassano’s Pizza in the living room while watching TV which is something I always wanted to do.  Number 3 was the most impressive part because eating pizza and watching TV at the same time was an experience reserved only for very special occasions.  Sometimes I wonder how different today’s kids would be if they spent New Year’s Eve watching Guy Lombardo (and Lawrence Welk weekly) as I was somewhat forced to do?  But I digress.

As I moved into my teens Guy Lombardo was replaced by the Watch Night Service at church where we gathered to watch movies about the Rapture to ring in the New Year.  This was usually followed by tuning in Wolfman Jack on The Midnight Special upon returning home.  One of the more memorable New Year’s was my senior year in high school when after the Watch Night service I went to a friend’s house where the wild and crazy bunch of kids I hung around with sat around telling jokes and discussing which M&M color tasted the best.  Yes, I did have a real wild streak during my high school years. That year the temperature on New Year’s Eve ranged from a low of -6 to a high of 10 followed by a balmy New Year’s Day with a low of 0 and a high of 14!  Perhaps it was that New Year’s when the thought of going to a college in Florida started to sound like a really, really good idea.

But, alas, even during those college year’s New Year’s Eve was not much better.  Somehow I could manage to stay pretty healthy during the semester only to get sick with my annual throat infection over the Christmas break. One New Year’s Eve I could feel a fever coming on and spent the early part of the evening trying to find a doctor’s office open.  When I finally did, I received the expected news that yes, I had a throat infection and I needed a shot – and the target of choice was not the arm.  The nurse who was probably looking to take out her frustrations on someone for having to work on New Year’s Eve because, unlike me, she probably had plans, attempted to administer the shot and then happily declared’ “oh, this needle is clogged, I will have to go find another one” and with that she left me there for several minutes while she, supposedly,  went to find a new needle.  Upon her return with the new clog-free needle she informed me that she would try the new needle on the other side.  I suppose that New Year’s Eve I learned what it means to turn the other “cheek,”

When my boys were small New Year’s was fun because they were excited to stay up late, eat lots of junk and ring in the New Year.  Then, of course,  there was all the excitement of Y2K – when, as it turned out, nothing happened, just like most of my New Year’s.  Now the boys are all out doing their own thing on New Year’s Eve and that just leaves the two of us at home with the odds being pretty good that neither of us will actually be awake at midnight.

So, here is wishing you a Happy New Year and hoping that you get to whoop it up this New Year’s Eve! I see that there are plenty of Guy Lombardo videos on YouTube, so maybe for old time’s sake I’ll see if I can find a Cassanos and eat in front of the computer monitor which, by the way, probably has a larger screen than that old black and white TV in the living room did.  Yes sir, I am going to start off 2015 living on the edge!