That's it

It’s expected that one does an annual summing up at this point.  Significant things that have happened in the past year and all that.  The hitch is when you hit what I have decided (with apologies to Richard Ford for cribbing the Frank Bascombe life-as-phases concept) is the Reductive Phase of life any annual report of Important Things will be overwhelmingly negative.  See, the Reductive Phase of life is when you hit that age where you know each successive year will end with you sharing this plane of existence with fewer and fewer loved ones.  When you’re child-free you tend to hit this phase a little earlier since you’re never going to gain sons/daughters in law or grandchildren.  You’re just going to spend every year saying goodbye to friends and family both dear and distant until it’s your turn.  Nothing to be done about it, you just have to make sure you’re having the best time you can with the time you have. 

So, like every previous entry here this will cover things inconsequential, many of them viewed over the upper rim of a glass. 

There was that guy that cold night in the lower bar in the Whitehall street terminal, barely conscious as a large West Indian woman ground her ample posterior into his crotch as Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass” blasted from the bartender’s radio.

There was that lone piece of confetti frozen into the gutter on Sixth Avenue for weeks after last New Year’s like the worst kind of house guest.

There were my ever-friendly upstairs beer guys, always greeting me with a smile, calling me “boss” and on Christmas Eve desperately trying to ply me with hot dogs.  “It’s Kreeeeesmeees boss, you have hot dog!  Free!”  I explained that I was headed to a place with a lot of food and escaped sans dog though I did have to take my customary “cheeps”. 

There were those two guys from Indiana losing their minds because the juke box in a New Orleans dive bar had a Kiss record on it.

There were people every night running to catch a 7:30pm ferry that has never existed on weekdays.  They exist in all seasons.  They will exist tonight.  They will swear and hustle and work to reach something that wasn’t there.  American Strivers all. 

There was that pouring rainstorm that I walked through. 

There was that really hot day.

There were all those cold days where people couldn’t stop talking about the weather and it was annoying.

There was that time I got bad service from a rude person.

There were those meals.  Some were good.  Some weren’t.  Some were indoors. Some were outdoors.

There were annoying things. 

There were things that were not annoying. 

That’s it.