written by: John Shuff
Two New Yearโs parties weโll never forget. Unfortunately.
When we wake up onย Monday, January 1, 2018, it will be the beginning of a new 365-day cycle: a New Year. Usually, it begins with a rollicking New Yearโs Eve culminating in watching the ball drop on Times Square to the count of 5-4-3-2-1. Bingo! Weโre in a New Year; one replete with resolutions, most of which will be trashed within a month. (I once resolved not to drink alcohol for a year. I made it. However, my wife asked me to start drinking again as she said Iโd become โquite boring.โ)
We all know the New Yearโs Eve party animal is often a New Yearโs Day zombie. Many will roll out of bed, cotton-mouthed, head pounding and groggy, wondering what hit them. Time for the Tums, Alka Seltzer, Mylanta or an old family elixir for hangoversโanything to help face the challenges of New Yearโs Day, like watching 12 hours of football.ย
My wife Margaret Mary and I have had our share of memorable (and not so memorable) New Yearโs Eve parties, but I think itโs the train wrecks we remember the most, like two in the late 1960s.ย
The first was in the winter of 1967 when we went to the ski resort Holiday Valley outside of Buffalo to celebrate New Yearโs. We were guests of our insurance agent, whom we had known for a year. I remember our walking into the party and being introduced to the guests when I was approached by a petite brunette who asked for a drink and then to dance. Toward the end of the set, she looked up at me with goo-goo eyes and said, โYou are all mineย tonight.โย
I honestly donโt remember what I said. I am not sure words came out as much as a helpless stutter, and I looked frantically for Margaret Mary who had about then just received the same proposition from her husband.ย
My insurance guy had invited us to welcome in 1968 with a group
of swingers.
We left the party and went to our room to check outโonly to find a drunk passed out in our bed. I literally threw him into the hallway, tossed a blanket over his sorry ass and drove back to Buffalo.
It was a year later in 1969 when a coworker I did not know especially well invited us to Garden City, Long Island, for New Yearโs. We lived in Westchester County, New York, which meant it was a two-train trip, one to Grand Central Station in Manhattan and then one to Penn Station for the Long Island leg. But that was just the beginning. We arrived at the hostโs home, knowing not one soulโuntil my friend shows up, 45 minutes late, with his wife in tow.ย
We make small talk. I steal a glance at Margaret Mary who is looking straight ahead, her face frozen in the kind of profound boredom that borders on a trance. I know she is wondering why we are there and how we can make a stealthy but rapid exit. That is just about when a fight erupts in the kitchen and then cascades into the dining room. Alarmingly, the main event, unfolding before our eyes, featured my friendโs wife sans wig and a cat woman, both screeching. There was no fight announcer, no ring and no referee: just a lot of wild swinging, hair pulling, choice words and, finally, two exhausted, drunk women sitting in opposite corners.ย
It was riveting.ย
The story behind this was my friendโs wife thought something was going on between cat woman and her husband. I never asked my friend the true cause.
That night, we arrived home atย 5 a.m.ย after riding the vomit comet from Grand Central to suburban Hartsdale. Margaret Mary never said a word about that evening or the one two years before, which was either deeply kind or the result of shell shock at my colorful cast of friends.
Most New Yearโs Eves begin with a kiss, handshakes, toasts, fireworks, the playing of โAuld Lang Syneโ plus all the ceremony that typifies this time-honored evening. For most of us, it represents a new beginning. And, like anything new, it also invites uncertainty and apprehensionโwhich is exactly how I feel when I look back on the people who invited us to join them in ringing in 1968 and 1970.
Happy New Year. May your hopes for 2018 exceed your expectations.
