Topic: New Year’s

Author: Chris Dunn

“I just want to see the ball drop…”

Remembering very far back, so far back I wasn’t even allowed to stay up the whole night, my mother told me tales of the New Year’s Eve Ball falling at Times Square. “It’s New Year’s Eve,” she explained, “and at midnight this huge ball of lights falls. Everybody counts down, and when it hits zero, the ball drops.” My young mind had no trouble rationalizing this with all the other wondrous things I’d slowly begun to comprehend about adult life. A year had passed. There was a party to be had. People were celebrating in a square… Like Village Square? My face must have looked perplexed, because she continued trying to explain it to me. Lights, cheering, partiers, squares, ball of light and fireworks, it all made a grown-up sort of sense, but what continue to trouble me was, If the ball is so huge, won’t people be crushed when it comes down on the square? Why would they cheer instead of getting to a safe distance? “No,” my mother assured me. “It’s up on a pole, over the square. There’s a big sign and when the ball hits the sign, it’s the new year!” So many more questions… If the ball misses the sign, is it NOT the new year? Doesn’t the ball crush the sign? And why does the New Year fall in the middle of winter? I asked to stay up to clarify things, but I was too young. Even when I got old enough that they would wake me to see the event, my sleepy eyes could scarcely frame what they were seeing. Lights flashing, people singing nonsense, confetti. Maybe there was a ball. Can I go back to sleep?

“It won’t be New Year’s until I see the ball drop.”

Before my tenth birthday, I had gathered enough information that I no longer feared for the safety of the revelers at Times Square, and I even managed to stay up on the odd year to witness the event. My siblings and I would take to the streets and bang pots and pans together until the neighbors complained or our arms tired. Seeing the ball was like proof positive that you had beaten the year. Awaking on the couch to the sounds of sibling revelry, was the worst! I almost didn’t feel entitled to engage in our cacophonous displays of merriment. I still did. It was going to be forever before it happened again after all.

“Can we switch to NBC when the ball’s about to drop?”

Years later the Pit Crew began a yearly vigil and went to great lengths to maintain it, if you recall my earlier tale of The Craziest Thing I’ve Ever Done… We always tried to time it right so that the drugs would be kicking in right around the time the ball struck New Year. A brief gesture was made to the passage of time, and then we’d skulk off to our personal corners to see what wondrous visions the night would reveal. Dick Clark’s bones crumbled before us before eventually morphing into Ryan Seacrest and Jenny McCarthy. Sequined glasses tolled the passing years. Lights flashing, people singing, kisses, and horrible music acts continued to play for hours on the TV, while we bounced around from to room to room propelled by various intoxicants. In those days, I had little time to do more than stop in or sometimes simply call home, to wish them a happy new year, but it was nice to know, when the ball fell, we were sharing the moment together.

“I just need to see it…”

Last year, I asked my father what he was going to do for New Year’s. He said, he hadn’t really thought about it. So, since my Pit crew now all had wives and children and their wilder days were behind them, he and I made plans to spend the night together. He wanted very much to have a shot of whiskey, and I indulged him. Washing down the foul-tasting liquid with bitter beer, we shared the pre-show hours talking nostalgia while trying to avoid the sad topics of mother’s absence and his cancer. The whiskey bounced off the potent drug cocktail the man was already under, and he was a little bummed that he couldn’t find the buzz he knew, but then the countdown started, and the ball dropped. We cheered and hugged, welcoming in 2018 like we had so many years before it, knowing somewhere unspoken that it was very likely our last one together.