New Lang Syne

As I was sitting there on the couch watching the fancy sparkle-ball fall very slowly in Times Square on my television late New Year's Eve, I had a couple of thoughts:

1) I live in Southern California. This didn't occur to me specifically as I was watching the broadcast. I piece that together almost daily, roughly around the same time I get the mail. Yes, Sundays can be confusing, but I try to limit my travels that day to church and IHOP for sustenance and worship, respectively. What I mean is, the world is a big place. So big, in fact, that the gigantic, fiery, fiery sun cannot cover the whole thing in the same amount of light all at the same time. This necessitates the need for Time Zones, which I know sound like some dreadful conundrum from an episode of Doctor Who, but really just keep us from eating breakfast in the afternoon AND give us another good reason to make fun of Alaskans. Also, judging by the sounds of explosions in the near distance late every December 31 and the cheerfully colored vomit in my yard the morning of most January Firsts, there is no interstate party embargo that limits overindulgence and inhibition-inhibiting to the Greater New York and Tri-State Area. And yet somehow, for some inexplicable reason, I can only get tape-delayed New Year's celebrations from New York City on my television every single year. Normally this is just Regular Annoying. Couple it with a solid 10-minute monologue of Carson Daly douching all over my TV from the inside and it seems like I should have some kind of federal case about felony boringness being smuggled across state lines. I can be just as alienated by people who don't represent me or my way of life by watching a live feed from Los Angeles, thanks very much. What, we don't have people out here who can either awkwardly kiss on cue or stare into a camera and go "Woo!" of an evening? This is the entertainment capital of the world. We invented staring into a camera and going "Woo!"

2) Yes, I stay at home and watch TV every year. No, I don't always make it until midnight. No, you cannot come over.

3) Like a thrown cannonball to the chest it occurred to me, as I watched 2009 become 2010 three hours ago in Manhattan, alone with my oldest boy, the only other survivor of our five-person family to go the distance, that the next time we roll the ole Year Odometer up one in the tens place, circa 2020, that same boy will be a 20-year-old man, as far away from me as he can get, probably dead drunk, passed out in his own sick under a dorm common room coffee table. The crushing swirl of sadness, existential panic, the cruel thievery of time and the intense realization of Now settled over me all at once. This is our last family decade. You only really get two. And if you're a parent, the only thing you really want out of it at the end is to have raised someone who doesn't spend all his New Yearses at home, on tape delay from New York.

4) So to answer your next question, yes, I then gave the boy a beer.

Merry New Year.