I thought the ball would, you know, drop. As in fall. As in have a bit of velocity. I thought maybe it was made of glass and would shatter. THAT would be cool.

I will confess that I don’t usually enjoy New Year’s Eve. With very few exceptions, my memories of the New Year’s celebrations of my youth are all tinged with disappointment. It’s supposed to be a Big Night, and it rarely actually was. It’s supposed to be romantic — that midnight kiss — and quite often my high school and college hopes for New Year’s romance were thwarted. It’s supposed to be a night to party, to get happy on booze. I was never one to drink to excess, and many of the people I was with who did get drunk wound up regretting doing so.

Even the Time’s Square ball drop was disappointing the first time I saw it. I was just a kid, of course, and I expected it to be dramatic — I thought the ball would, you know, drop. As in fall. As in have a bit of velocity. I thought maybe it was made of glass and would shatter. THAT would be cool. I figured maybe there would be fireworks. Something. ANYTHING.

Instead, it was about as exciting as watching an elevator go from one floor down to the next.

Not every New Year’s Eve has been bad. Nancy and I tend to have enjoyable, quiet evenings: a movie, a good bottle of wine, maybe a special dinner. Every once in a while, a friend will have a party and we’ll go for a while. Clearly THAT won’t be happening this year…

One year, when I was a junior in high school, several friends and I went to see the Allman Brothers Band on New Year’s Eve. They gave a good show, although they played late and then skipped their final encore, which should have been “Rambling Man.” To this day, I’m a bit salty about that.

Nancy, the girls, and I were visiting my brother and his family for the Y2K New Year. The families had fun together, and my brother Bill, and his partner were with us as well. Bill was pretty freaked out by Y2K. As was his wont, he expected the worst to happen. Every doomsday scenario you can remember from that period, he embraced. He even went so far as to take a bunch of cash out of the bank, in case the ATM machines all crashed. The morning of December 31, he decided he was too worried about what was surely coming, and he needed to go back to his home in western Massachusetts and ride out the impending crisis there. So he left us. That evening, as the first news reports came in from Australia and parts of Asia, it became clear that Y2K would be a non-event. The next morning, Jim and I called Bill to wish him a happy New Year and make sure he was all right. And being the wise-ass I am, I asked him, “Hey, you don’t happen to have any extra cash lying around, do you?” I won’t repeat his response here…

We were living in Australia for New Year’s 2005-06. Down Under, New Year’s is a summer holiday, so, like most Aussies, we spent December 31st at the beach, and then at a fun street fair in Wollongong. That night, we were treated to a terrific fireworks display. The next day, the first of the year, was spectacularly hot. I mean HOT. It got up to 44 degrees Celsius, which is equivalent to about 111 degrees Fahrenheit. It was too hot to do anything at all. At one point, I walked into the kitchen of the house we were renting, and all the spiders that lived in the walls and cabinets — a couple of dozen in total — had emerged from their hiding places and were scattered across the ceiling. Bizarre, and more than a little freaky. The girls put on their bathing suits and spent much of the day playing in the bathtub. Nancy and I did our best not to move. Late in the day, a front moved through, bringing strong winds and cool temperatures. It probably dropped thirty degrees, to the low-80s. To us, at that point, it felt like fall had arrived.

This will be another quiet year, and that’s fine with me. Nancy and I will have our nice wine and yummy dinner. We’ll watch a movie or play Gloomhaven, or [gasp] both. And we will happily, eagerly bid 2020 farewell and welcome 2021.

Wherever your plans for the holiday take you, I hope you have fun, stay safe, and enjoy the company of people you love. I wish you a New Year filled with joy, friendship, laughter, and good health.

See you in January.