My first thought, when I saw the new #BoW topic, was "I have no plans for New Year's Eve this year. That would be quite a boring post."
To add to the excitement, I thought back to 1992, and realized I was probably in bed by midnight that year. At the time, I was chief of everything at my upscale deli/bakery/catering operation in Brooklyn, New York, and New Year's Eve was the single most busy day of the year. Nearly everyone shopped for their New Years Eve goodies on New Years Eve, and almost no one pre-ordered. We would stock the store to the rafters, and hope we had enough product to last until we closed up shop at 9pm. It was a mad house the entire day. At closing time, I'd have gone home to my 6 month old baby and crashed, long before midnight.
Where’s the post in all that?
Then I remembered a New Year's Eve that was forty three years ago, in 1979, and my post appeared. I hope we can stretch the prompt for this contest to include a year 13 years earlier than the one we’ve been asked to write about.
After obtaining a master of arts degree in mathematics, I went back to my tiny hometown in upstate New York, and moved back in with my parents. Kids then did what kids now still do after graduation—head home for room and board.
I got a job in a bank, which was my very first, and as it turned out my last, 9 to 5 job. I worked in the general ledger department, balancing the whole bank for the day. I really liked the job. The people were all very kind to me. I learned a lot of bookkeeping, which turned out to come in very handy in my future career as head bottle scrubber in a series of food businesses. My favorite tidbit to know was that, if your balance is off by a factor of nine, someone somewhere in the bank had probably transposed two adjacent digits. It was my job to find the transpositions.
My social life was quite bleak. Absolutely ALL of my high school friends had left town, never to return. I was far younger than everyone else at the bank. Making friends proved very difficult. I made one friend, and leaned on her too much for my human contact. When New Year’s Eve rolled around, I knew where she would be going, and hoped she’d let me tag along with her. But, she never asked. While she was at Ernie’s house, I sat at home with my parents, miserable. Later on, I learned that this particular friend was known for being quite mean. I knew how to pick them back then.
I left for Boston soon after that to look for employment as a computer programmer. No laughing from those of you who know just how hopeless I am at technology today!
Let’s fast forward forty three years, skipping over the events that got me into the food business. My parents are both gone from this earth, but I recently moved back to my hometown. I bought the house my aunt and uncle lived in, which was a short walk from my own childhood home, and was a house I spent quite a bit of time in; my cousin Peter was born just a few weeks after I was, and we were close throughout high school.
The town has not gone overboard with covid restrictions, which I like very much, and you might even think that nothing was amiss at all if you didn’t open the newspaper or listen to the news. But, even though I know a great many people in this town, I still have no good friends here. Not a single person has mentioned New Year’s Eve to me. It looks like I’ll be spending this New Year’s Eve home alone too.
What a difference forty three years has made! Absolutely none!!!
This is my entry to The Silver Bloggers Community's current Blog of the Week contest.
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