When assigned a column date of January 1, it seemed logical to write a New Year’s resolution column.chip-jones

   I tried to do that, really did, but all I came up with was this: Make them, in a couple of weeks break them, then feel guilty. You know — lose weight, work harder, make more money, be a better person, blah, blah, blah.

   Not quite a whole column. Not even a very good one.

   Then I saw one of those decade wrapups. The best and the worst of the oughts, O’s, zeros or whatever we are supposed to call the last 10 years.

   The thing that struck me about the end of this decade is how it hadn’t occurred to me that the decade was ending. Remember the end of 1999? Y2K? The whole world was going to stop. The artist then still known as Prince wanted us to party like it. That was a decade end that snuck up on no one.

   So instead of resolutions, I have gone back and thought about the end of the other decades of my life, where I was and what I was thinking about.

   12/31/1959: I was 3 pushing 4. I don’t remember much, but I imagine I was wondering if my mom was going to be bringing home any more little brothers. (Note: she didn’t, though a sister showed up in the ’60s). My dad, I’m sure, was trying to figure out he was going to raise and support his three sons.

   12/31/1969: 13 pushing 14. I was at the peak of my intelligence. I knew everything, except how to get a 13-year-old girl to kiss me. I was also trying to figure out how to afford a new bike since a driver’s license was still a few years away. This was all contingent on not getting nuked by the Russians. Remember the show “The Wonder Years”? That show was set in 1969. The main character was 13 — he was me. Except there was no Winnie.

   12/31/1979: 23 pushing 24, trying to figure out how to get my girlfriend to marry me. I was also trying to figure out how to pay for the house and the car I had just bought. This was all contingent on surviving the predicted new and coming Ice Age.

   12/31/1989: 33 pushing 34, trying to figure out how we (that girlfriend became my wife) were going to raise and support our three daughters (see my dad circa 1959). I was also trying to figure how to afford that new minivan we desperately needed. This was all contingent on those Russian nukes from 1969 not falling into the hands of terrorists and blowing us up.

   12/31/1999: 43 pushing 44, trying to figure how to afford sending our oldest to college, followed shortly by her sisters. This was all contingent on the world not ending with the coming Y2K disaster.

   12/31/2009: yesterday, 53 pushing 54, trying to figure out how to afford the wedding of our newly engaged youngest daughter. This is all contingent on the polar ice caps not melting and drowning us all.

   Looking to the future, 12/31/2019: 63 pushing 64, trying to figure out how to afford visiting and spoiling all the grandkids. This will all be contingent on surviving whatever the looming disaster of the day is then.

   Happy new decade!

CHIP JONES is a lifetime LaPortean, the voice of the Slicers on local radio, and a real estate agent. Contact him at chipjonesmtm@comcast.net.