New Year's Eve (the Parental Version)

Back in the day, New Year’s Eve was a marker of one’s essential coolness. When asked, “What did you do for New Year’s,” you wanted your answer to stand out: “We went to Club Whatever until midnight and then sat on the beach until sunrise” or “I went to this fabulous party with the most creative, interesting people, and we made sculpture out of broken clocks by the light of the moon.” It was understood that New Year’s Eve wasn’t an ordinary night; rather, it was one that had to generate a STORY.

Well, then we had kids and lost any semblance of essential coolness. I know, I know, some of you have kids and are still cool, but we aren’t. Somewhere along the line, we decided to let our young, cool selves go into hibernation. We figure that one of these days, we’ll wake up and be revitalized, older cool people, and that will be OK. Until then, however, we’re just tired.

But New Year’s Eve is still noteworthy no matter how boring your life is, so we had the idea that we could celebrate the east coast New Year’s Eve – that way we could be wild and crazy until 9 pm and then go to bed like usual. To that end, we invited some other parents-of-a-kindergartener over to join in our nutty early evening festivities.

You may not know it, but Michael can make a mean margarita. A REALLY mean margarita, the kind that makes me pretty stupid after just a couple of sips. So it was 5:00, and the grownups were sitting around the kitchen table with a huge pitcher of lemon-lime goodness. After just a few minutes, we were giggling like kids about old prom stories (what color was YOUR tuxedo?) and bad hair and questionable fashion choices. Every once in a while, a kid would come in and ask something like, “Mama, can you take the top off of this toy?” And I would say something like, “Umm, you’ll have to wait a minute until I can reconnect my brain with my hands.”

But here’s where that essential coolness problem comes in. It’s was now 5:45, and we were all feeling kind of bad. We looked around at our disheveled selves and thought, “We could just go to sleep right now.” But, no. There were 3 hours and 15 minutes left until “New Year’s.” Wouldn’t it have been embarrassing to go to bed BEFORE the east coasters did their countdown? Wouldn’t it have been pathetic to go to bed when it was technically still daytime?

Never fear. We made it until 9. Oh yes we did. And I am proud.

All of this got me thinking about New Year’s Eves in the past, and I was startled by one memory. I’m not sure what year it was – sometime in the late 1990s. We were in Minnesota, visiting Michael’s family. New Year’s Eve fell toward the end of the trip, and all of us were feeling weary of the constant celebrating. That night’s activity consisted of sitting around together watching the Access Hollywood Year in Review special. But there was one funny twist. Michael’s sister told us that changing your underwear at midnight could bring you special luck, provided that the underwear’s color was aligned with your wish. If I remember correctly, yellow meant money, pink was love, and white was happiness. So at 11:59, all six or seven women, including Michael’s mother, took off for the back bedroom where we stripped, changed, re-dressed, and returned to the living room by the stroke of midnight.

And we’ve never spoken of it since.

I wonder, did anyone get their wish that night? Can well-chosen unmentionables bring prosperity or romance or just general good energy? Next year, I will try again. And if you find me with a wad of cash in my pocket in January 2009, you will know why.