Auld Lang Syne of the Apocalypse

May old acquaintance be forgot. Out with the old and in with the new. New and improved. Better tasting plus more cleaning power! Humans always seem to think new, in and of itself, proves better. Well, here we are at the beginning of a “new” year, so following this logic things will be better or at least have increased cleaning power.
Personally, many things went quite well last year. I do not feel the need to throw it aside like a sock with a hole in the toe. Actually, I don’t throw away socks with a hole in the toe. I still hold to my theory stating each pair of socks you own is one more day without having to do laundry. There needs to be two holes in the toe and one in the heel before I think about tossing aside an old sock. Something my wife does not understand, but is willing to tolerate. Which brings me to one of the reasons 2006 was a good year.
I didn’t get divorced. Now those of you who know me need to realize there was never any danger of this happening. The reason I take the time to mark I didn’t get divorced is because my marriage is the best thing in my life and if 2006 was a good year, which it was, my wife is a major contributor to that success. Getting sappy is not in my job description for this column so I will now digress.
One big reason I do not have any problems in my marriage is I am too tired to create any. Infidelity is often cited by couples ending a relationship. If Cheryl Tiegs, (this proves I am out of the “lusting in my heart” stage of life because I had to reach all the way back to when I was thirteen to think of a “hot babe” to use as an example), if Ms. Tiegs offered to make my deepest fantasy come true she would remain fully clothed as she wrote the check getting me out of debt so I could quit my job and sleep until 9 o’clock every morning. Okay, to prove I’m still a red-blooded American man she could write the check while wearing that white mesh swimsuit she wore in Sports Illustrated.
Another example of why 2006 was a good year is 364 days of the year I did not throw up. Everyone can agree that a day without throwing up is always better than a day in which one does throw up. The day I had some sort of virus which caused extreme discomfort was horrible, but it was not self-inflicted. There were times in my youth I ingested a few too many containers of cereal malt beverage and became unwell because of it. That was long ago, just a few years after Cheryl Tiegs lived in my daydreams.
Nowadays the things which threaten my day-to-day health are a result of spending my work days in what amounts to a petrie dish of bacteria and viruses, a school. I have decided there are only two ways to avoid catching any illness when working in a building with six hundred germ incubators (a.k.a children). The first is to arrive each day wearing one of those suits the NASA guys wore when they invaded Elliot’s house looking for ET. This makes it very hard to sit at my desk and the gloves make it impossible to type discipline referrals into the computer. The other way is to bar students from the building. This greatly reduces the risk of being exposed to germs and it eliminates the need to write discipline referrals as well, two for the price of one, cool.
Looking forward to 2007 I have to admit I have my worries. Even though the Chiefs got into the playoffs which required Kansas City winning, Tennessee losing, Cincinnati losing, Denver losing, the moon moving into the seventh house, Jupiter aligning with Mars, causing peace to guide the planets, and love to steer the stars. There are other indications the world may be headed for disaster. Not the least of which is “Armed and Famous.”
Ad after ad for this “reality” show was displayed as I watched the game. If handing an ex-professional wrestler (Trish Stratus), a has-been television heartthrob (Erik Estrada), the son of a whacked out rock star (Jack Osbourne), a little person who made his living being publicly humiliated by someone named Johnny Knoxville (Jason Acuna a.k.a. Wee Man), and a member of the most famously dysfunctional family of all time (LaToya Jackson) real guns and badges is not a sign of the apocalypse I suggest someone study the Book of Revelations a bit more closely.