Good Riddance 2020!

 This recent poem of mine says it all about this "kidney stone of a year," analogous to the "kidney stone of a decade I went through in the 1970s.  

GOOD RIDDANCE, 2020!

 

Yes, 2020 was indeed a

“kidney stone of a year,”

most analogous to the

“Doonesbury” cartoon at

the end of 1979 toasting

the end of a
“kidney stone of a decade.”

The Seventies were also a

“kidney stone of a decade”

for me personally,

psychologically,

and in many other ways,

a real letdown from the

heady Sixties that had

preceded it. 

But in December, 1979,

on Pearl Harbor Day

to be exact,

I moved to Indianapolis

from Ft. Wayne to take a

job with the State of Indiana

that doubled my income.

“Now, I can drink the way

I really want to!” I eagerly

anticipated; but six months

later I was broke, drunk,

and without a job, but

decided to straggle on

rather than crawl back to

my unrelentingly hostile

parents—surely one of the

few good decisions I made at the

time, a bit of sobriety between

drunkenness that saved my life!

Early in the new century I changed

my life for the extremely better,

with decent employment starting

in September, 2001, when I was

already in my early fifties; then,

in 2004, still broke and anxious

as ever, I noted delightfully that

I was spontaneously not drinking,

and felt good about it.

Further, it wasn’t

that I couldn’t “afford”

to drink.  Earlier,

I couldn’t “afford” to drink

either, and that had never

deterred me.  So now,

some twenty years later,

I feel good about myself and

my fortunes; and even though

coronavirus ruled 2020 and

still threatens to rule much of

2021, I see the proverbial

“light at the end of the tunnel,”

despite the cynicism that

remark made repeatedly by

U.S. bigwigs during the

Vietnam War justifiably

engendered. (Inspiring that

famously anonymous

Vietnam. GI to remark

sardonically, “Will the last

GI to leave Vietnam

please turn out the light at

the end of the tunnel?”) 

But now 2021 does indeed

approach as I write this

(on December 29, 2020),

and I feel good about myself

and the upcoming new year,

even though we may all be

hurtling at nearly the speed

of light toward hell wedged in like

sardines and trapped within that

fragile legendary handbasket!