Auld acquaintance should be forgot
By Johnnie Carrier

Wednesday, December 31
Oh great, another New Year's Eve. It's the most uncomfortable night of the year -- wasn't that an Andy Williams song? Whether I'm at home, at a friend' s house party or down at the Eagles Hall dressed like Malcolm McDowell in Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange," New Year's Eve is one night of the year I wish I could skip.
There is a certain vibe oozing from New Year's Eve that makes you, for some unknown reason, pick the biggest fight of the year with your wife or girlfriend. Why? I don't know, and if I did, I would be wrecking lives with Dr. Phil on TV.
Most often it starts from a set-up question from your wife, who, in some predetermined way, is being used by the Queen of Bad Karma. It's not the usual set-up question, either. With her hair looking great, and the dress she's wearing not distorting the shape and size of her hips, she's doomed to ask you, "Don't you think that girl over there is pretty?"
If you answer no, you've insulted your wife's taste and you spend the rest of New Year's Eve answering questions about other things you disagree on (or worse, listening to how you have nothing in common).
Should you answer, "Yes, that girl over there is pretty," hold on. You are in for an equally long night. Because it's here she'll say with that certain attitude, "Why don't you kiss her at midnight?"
I don't care if you are Mahatma Gandhi, possessing the patience of Job. Maybe you are some
panty-wearing, touchy-feely metro-sexual, who is really in tune with your wife's feelings. It doesn't matter. There is something God put inside of you that makes you answer: "All right, I think I will (kiss her), after I consume a bottle of Hennessey's Irish whiskey and throw up on a stranger's suede coat."
Once you get your own life calmed down, you face the anxiety of the midnight kiss, which for some reason has the same amount of pressure as an air traffic controller talking down one of the passengers to a safe landing. Especially if you are out with that couple whose other half is the crazy, jealous type of guy. After kissing your own wife -- yes, the one you've been fighting with all night -- it's customary to kiss the other ladies in the group. And when you make your move on the wife of that other couple, Mr. Crazy hovers over you as if he was an Apache helicopter and you were a grass hut village. He's holding a stop clock, making sure you don't linger on his wife's lips longer than he thinks you should. As if I was George Clooney in size-44 pants.
The wife of course has had a few pops and grabs you as if she was some spinster school marm from a John Houston movie. Full of pent-up feelings for anyone who doesn't pepper her with questions about whom she talked to at the supermarket, she kisses you as if you were marching off to some type of state-sponsored police action in a third-world nation. And now you have another nut on your hands.
A night like this makes staying home watching Ryan Seacrest talk for Dick Clark (like some animatronics gone badly from Walt Disney World), look good. But that's what I do now on New Year's. I stay at home, where I can avoid the other crazies of the world and argue with my wife in the friendly confines of my living room.
Of course there is one more reason I no longer go out on New Year's Eve. It's the song. For some deep-seated, emotionally charged reason, "Auld Lang Syne" makes me cry harder than peeling a Spanish onion. It's a relatively new phenomenon in my life that started at a friend's house a few years ago.
At midnight, I kissed my wife, the song started playing, and I ran out of the room sobbing, as if I were the ingénue in an afternoon soap opera.
It was not the coolest moment in my life. And no one found it sexy like they do when men cry in the movies. Plus, who wants to spend New Year's with a crying fat guy? No one, not even me!
So, party like it's 1999? Nope not me, I'm going to bed early and try to miss the whole thing. Just don't come up to me in the supermarket singing that song, or you'll have a blubbering fool in the frozen food aisle.

Johnnie Carrier of North Adams is a freelance writer who's glad they don't have a song for Valentine's Day

BUY MY DAMN BOOK

TAKE MY LIFE...PLEASE
by Johnnie Carrier; Edited by Glenn Drohan

"Funny, I thought I'd die laughing" John Adams (second President of the United States)

"This guy's sense of humor kills me" John Dillinger (shot while exiting a theatre)

"Buy this book or the terrorists win" George K. Bush (gas station attendant)

This collection of autobiographical short essays is truly funny. Hilarious! Poignant! Satirical! It will make your bathroom the envy of every man, woman, and child in the nation.

About the Author
Johnnie Carrier resides with his wife, Dawn, and son, David, in the beautiful Western Massachusetts city of North Adams. Undereducated and under-financed, Carrier finds himself living the All-American blue collar dream, which includes shopping the no-name food aisle at the neighborhood market. He loves short walks to the refrigerator, cars that start, and longs to be elected governor of Florida because it's the only way he could afford to get away from these cold New England winters. He can be read bi-weekly in the North Adams Transcript or at www.thetranscript.com. (2008, paperback, 82 pages)
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