New Year, Same Us

Newsletter 2024-01-03

Our New Year’s Eve celebration was one for the ages—literally. It appealed to kids from ages nine to fourteen. They subscribe to the theory that if we did something once, it’s officially a tradition that we have to do every year until the end of time. This only applies to things they find fun. None of them are claiming it’s an annual tradition to return to Mammoth Cave or that indoor water park with the sharp rocks. Those experiences required them to go places and do things, as well as to face down their fears of potentially deadly stones. Just because that cave has stood firm for a million years doesn’t mean today won’t be the day it falls on top of you. Our New Year’s “tradition” was the opposite of those experiences. It was safer than any other possible way of celebrating because it was a normal night at home, but with more junk food and less sleep. The kids were in heaven.

They came to me the day before New Year’s Eve, or New Year’s Eve Eve if you will, to remind me of all this. They asked when we were going to the dollar store to get snacks. I forgot that we did that last year. My kids would never let it slip their minds. No gummy worm left behind. I often take them to the dollar store before road trips to let them load up on snacks. It helps cancel out the dread of spending the next seven to nine hours in the van as a family. There’s nothing worse than being strapped in next to your closest blood relatives. Besides raising morale, the snack run saves us money. It’s way cheaper than buying treats at a gas station. When you’re out on the road at a Casey’s in the middle of nowhere, your options are to pay seven dollars for that tiny single-serving bag of Cheez-Its or starve. There’s no middle ground. The dollar store helps us avoid that conundrum. The kids get to feel like they’re going on a shopping spree, picking out any three snacks they want with total impunity. That sense of freedom only costs me twelve dollars. That’s not true. Thanks to inflation, each item is now $1.25, costing me a grand total of fifteen dollars to make my kids feel rich. I guess I did that last year before New Year’s Eve because I didn’t have anything better to offer. It was more than enough excitement for them. No less than two of them reminded me about last year before I broke down and I agreed to do it again this year. I promised we would make our dollar store run on New Year’s Eve proper to get them good and sugared up for the night ahead. The only way they could have been happier is if they didn’t have to remind me in the first place.

Getting excited about candy might seem odd in my house, especially given the time of year. The girls are still working their way through the bottom third of the fifty pounds of candy we collected at Halloween. There’s some chocolate left, which truly shows you the magnitude of our treasure trove. In a more reasonable house that didn’t treat trick-or-treating like a sport, all the candy bars and M&M’s would have been gone by the end of the first week. Add to that the stocking candy from St. Nicholas—the greatest perk of Catholicism—and the random snacks we’ve accumulated for our various board game days and you have an epic hoard of junk food. Surely adding a few extra packages of random gummy items wouldn’t change how much my children enjoyed life. If you thought that, you’d be wrong. At the dollar store, they get to pick out something that’s only for them, even if they usually break down and pass it around because they want to sample everybody else’s stuff, too. Sharing is caring and also selfish at the same time. Candy brings out the best and worst in us.

I don’t worry about giving them too much sugar. Unlike me, they get full. After a few pieces of this and that, they simply stop eating. That’s not an experience I can relate to. My primitive monkey brain is adapted for the feast-or-famine environment of the open savannah. I’d be the ancient hominid that found a berry tree and ate the entire crop in one sitting. Afterward, I might be too bloated to run away from a saber-toothed tiger, but I would NOT die of starvation. My kids are much more reasonable around food. Our bountiful supply of snacks is a red herring. The kids can never eat more than a handful of it at a time without becoming ridiculously full. I wish I possessed their level of self-control. Then maybe I could approach an all-you-can-eat buffet without running the place out of business. Even the most well-stocked restaurant on the planet can’t handle feeding a black hole.

Snacks were just the first step of our New Year’s Eve celebration.