New Year's memories

Well, when you were born just after the end of World War II, the year 2010 seems pretty darn futuristic. There was a time when even the 1980s seemed a long way off. I can say that I read Orwell's 1984 when it did feel far enough away that it might as well have been titled 2084. But the years pass, and the Contentious One keeps chugging along, just waiting for his first big health crisis--which vital organ will grow the tumor? Ah, the joys of getting older.

Of all the days in the year, perhaps New Year's Eve has been the most eventful for me, in many ways. The fact that kissing at midnight is part of the New Year's ritual has led to a couple of memorable romances, one of which had a particularly significant impact on the path of my life. And then there was that New Year's Eve somewhere back in the 1970s when I was aggressively hustled and hit on (you can't make this stuff up) by a minister of a gay church from San Francisco, at a party in Mahtomedi. It was on that night that I learned how a woman might feel on the receiving end of untoward and unwelcome advances. The fact is that New Year's Eve, especially when you are young and single, invites a certain sort of debauchery--it is as if we are all in a time warp, willing to throw caution to the wind, in a state of suspended animation combined with a mild dose of inebriation. What happens on New Year's Eve stays on New Year's Eve--it's the calendar's equivalent to Las Vegas.

But now, as I grab my AARP membership card and hope for the Senior Discount at Jiffy Lube or some such place, I have to say that those days of debauchery are pretty much ancient history. You see, time projects both ways: in 1968, the year 2010 seemed like forever, and in 2010, 1968 now feels like a very distant but pleasant dream. Could it all have been THAT long ago?