Tuesday, December 31, 2019

The Trap is Sprung

I returned from writing at the Gardens about noon. I still had one foot on the threshold.

"Is New Year's the dumbest holiday?" Eli 18.4 asked.

"Oh, hell yes!" I said. Eli burst out laughing.

In the corner, glowering, a woman. "I don't see why people can't just let other people enjoy the holidays," she said. "#**@#*(@#***."

"I had no idea this was a trick question," I said, Eli still laughing. "A holiday purity test, apparently."

"The holiday is just more fun if other people in this house enjoy it," she said.

"Sorry, Mom, it's lame," Eli said.

"Wait, I'm not forced to enjoy New Year's more if you like it," I said. "Why would you enjoy it less if I don't?"

"You people," she said. She was one step away from bringing out the rowdy fists and shaking them, which is always a very funny moment.

It's true, though. New Year's is incredibly lame.

Other big holidays celebrate something that (allegedly) happened, generally, but with New Year's, we're celebrating the turn of a calendar. If I had my way, that calendar would never turn. I'd still be seven, playing football in the front yard, throwing the ball a mile, but still so fast that I couldn't outthrow myself. Now, after fifty-one of these alleged holidays since that time, I'm only only step ahead of the people trying to catch me and take me to the glue factory, and I don't mean a full step.

Of course, I gave up some of that youth for The Enthusiasm Engine, and who could ever regret that? So I'm old and crumbling, and expected to celebrate it, but I've also been very, very lucky.

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