At Least Read it For the Dick Clark Zinger

Most of what you are about to read was written on Jan. 4. I have a reason for saying that, which will become clear in about 400 words.

I was about two-thirds done. I wasn’t too happy with it. And when I got a better idea, I decided either to rework this one for this week or maybe even scrap it altogether.

But leaving it alone seems to make more sense. Here goes.

Jan. 4, 2021 — Well, New Year’s came and went without a lot of fanfare.

I pretty much fell asleep watching television on New Year’s eve and went to bed just after 11 p.m.

Sorry, but I had no desire to watch Dick Clark’s Rockin’ Zoom Call.

We bypassed virtually all of the holiday festivities in my family. It just didn’t feel right.

Our son Grant wasn’t able to come home for Christmas. He stopped by a few days later for a short visit on his way to the Amtrak station in Atlanta.

He now lives in New York — Brooklyn, to be exact.

He’s probably already folding pizza slices and saying “yous guys.”

While I’m thrilled to see how this next installment of his career takes him, it’s simply sad for me to know he’s so far away in one of the biggest cities in the world.

Of course, it doesn’t bother me that he moved out of a city where a crackpot blew up himself and a whole city block on Christmas morning.

It didn’t even dawn on me to watch any of the college football bowl games on New Year’s Day. My interest waned as the season went on, anyway. Back in September, I didn’t think I could get excited for a shortened season during a worldwide pandemic with 83 people in the stands, and I was right.

Of course, my Vols’ woeful campaign didn’t help anything.

One of my holiday traditions I did keep was counting cars with reindeer antlers on them.

I only saw 17. Which is a great improvement from years past. Thanks to all of you who helped keep the number low.

But I, like so many people, thought maybe by some magical intervention, something, anything would be better when I woke up in 2021.

I haven’t seen it yet.

The people who were mean and nasty in 2020 are still mean and nasty.

This promises to be a bloody week in our nation’s capital where conspiracy theorists armed to the teeth have been urged to revolt and protest the un-protest-able.

 That’s where I stopped. It is now Jan. 9, 2021 — three days after the insurrection attempt at the US Capitol building.

I stopped there on Jan. 4 because I didn’t know what to say next. 

That was then. This is now, and I still don’t know what to say.

I’ve sat here for 10 minutes and watched that blinking cursor taunt me.

Oh, I guess I could jump up on my little soapbox and condemn it. That would probably be good for a couple of emails.

But it makes no sense for me to pile on and echo what the majority of people on both sides of the aisle and all four corners of the earth are already saying.

So for now, I am just going to keep my mouth shut and hope I don’t see anymore cars wearing antlers.

Or rioters.