I was one of those, speaking of 2016 with woe and lamentations. Celebrity deaths, police shooting and being shot, terrorism, mass shootings, and, as it has been for every single year of my life, no peace in the Middle East.
O, and there was this presidential election thing, which made all of America feel like their toilets were backed up.
I was ready to anoint 2016 as a Terrible Year until someone reminded me of 1994, when “Hootie and the Blowfish had a #1 album. Those were dark days.”
I countered with reminding him that 2016 also had a Blue Bell ice cream shortage, at which point he reminded me of 1977, when Kanye West was born, and 2007, when Keeping Up With The Kardashian’s first aired.
So, there’s all that to consider.
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That It Felt Like A Bad Year Don’t Mean It Rates
65 million years ago a giant asteroid hit the Yucatan Peninsula. Shrinking as it burned through our atmosphere, it was still six miles wide on impact. Scientists use the word “incinerated” and they mean it literally – bugs, beasts, and broccoli – each and every, over a chunk of North, Central and South America, and that was just Day One of a seriously bad year.
Some of you are expecting me to mention the Black Plague, like woo-wooo-wooo, but a far worse year was less than 100 years ago, 1918. We had the First World War, where as usual, old generals used old strategies against new technology. The flower of youth, obeying orders, charging machine guns and more accurate cannons, both sides losing thousands in the time it would take a wino to put a dent in a bottle of two buck chuck.
1918 also had the Spanish Flu pandemic. Every population, from New Zealand to Zimbabwe, Eskimo to Aborigine, from every continent, just a great mass dying, somewhere between 2 and 5 percent of the entire human population… Children, adults, future this’s and former that’s, the best of us, the worst of us, the average of us, cough, cough, fever, fever, one after the other, and in some places, nobody left to build the caskets and dig the graves.
1863 was a big year for tragic news in America. North and south, women are walking behind mules, because the able bodied men were off fighting the Civil War. In little towns, cries and crumbling, people gathered near the telegraph office, to find that half of the boys that survived the last battle didn’t survive the latest one.
1943 was a big year for dying. The fulcrum year for a world at war, and deep inside the dark, the trains are unloading at Auschwitz.
1968 was pretty dramatic. Vietnam, and it’s not going well. We like to think of ourselves as good guys, but here comes news of the My Lai massacre, where we wiped out a village of women and children, and then…the Tet Offensive, where we’re like Mike Tyson in the ring with Buster Douglas. Martin Luther King shot in May…and we get a few weeks to get over that, and then in June, Bobby Kennedy…
Going historical makes 2016 go from rattlesnake to garter snake. As bad as it was, at least it wasn’t 2013, when twerking and selfie were the top two new words of the English language.
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As For 2017
I’d like to face 2017 like an actual grownup.
Dying will occur, like it always does. I was surprised at how rattled I was last year about celebrity deaths. It’s not like I’m some kid that doesn’t understand why the goldfish is swimming upside down. I think it honorable to swallow hard, and reflect on lives that have affected us, but I’d like to take bad news with a stiffer spine this year. (*I don’t want Jimmy Carter to go. He wasn’t a great President, but he is a stellar human being. Please not this year, Lord…)
Appreciation is always a good start to a new year and a good daily practice. Being alive gives me a reason to wake up every morning. Whatever health above that is blessed art thou.
Hillary and Trump wasn’t like choosing between FDR and Lincoln. It’s just the choice we had. I’m going to choose to watch how it plays out, be a good American and trust that America is filled with even better ones than me.
The new year doesn’t owe me anything. I know it’s just a mental game, to go from 365 back to 1, and pretend it’s all blank slate, but it’s a nice game; even if I never win, I like all the mulligans and do-overs. As I think every January, many good things are possible, as I think every December, some of them came about.
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2016 and 2017 Walk Into This Bar
2016: “You’re buying.”
2017: “Whatcha gonna do now that you’re retired?”
2016: “I’m gonna mic up some popcorn and follow a certain Twitter feed.”
2017: “You got any advice for a new year?”
2016: “Don’t let the internet go out. Use winter to put a lick on the mosquitoes. And make sure there’s always a station that plays the Andy Griffith Show.”
2017:: “What if I have a worse year than you?”
2016: “Just remember, you aren’t making the news. You’re just time, and the diary they write it down on…”
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This edition of Uncle P’s Bedtime Stories is brought to you by Eighty-one, where our favorite number is somewhere between 80 and 82.
Uncle P’s Bedtime Stories can be found on the Eighty-one Facebook page. People wishing to put him in their will may reach him at 81creativity@gmail.com.
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