Countdown

… 60! Time is honestly such a superficial concept. They’re outside counting down to midnight, only a minute away—but what is midnight? Twelve PM, which in itself is utterly abstract. So some call it the “darkest hour,” or say that midnight is the moment halfway between two consecutive moments when the sun is at its highest—which is an utter mouthful, anyway. But then the question is, what is a minute? What is a second? A minute is 1/1440th of the time between one midnight and the next, and a second is 1/60th of that. What sort of numbers are those? So the increments they count down with really make no sense. And then we might nitpick that the midnight of December 31st isn’t so different from the midnight of, say, January 18th, except maybe the weather, so why don’t we count down on January 18th? The simplest solution to all this mindless nonsense is to get rid of this stupid tradition of counting down to nothing, but of course, even a whisper of that would get everyone thinking I’m the Grinch in disguise when all I really want is a good night’s sleep!

…

… 54! I roll over yet again, trying to get comfortable on the lumpy bed. All it accomplishes, though, is further entangle me in the sheets and fill my ears with shifting crackling noises. The least these stupid sheets could do, I think bitterly, is block out the jubilant cheering outside my window, so naturally, that is exactly what the conspiring, cruel world doesn’t allow. I stop shifting but immediately find the need to throw my limbs astray in search of some sort of cool relief. Who in their right mind would decide on a blistering desert as the “perfect holiday spot”? The only possible conclusion is that my parents are not in their right minds. Ugh. And the locals have to be so loud!

…

… 38! I think I might be tempted to go out and scream at all those idiots outside my window. That firecracker sounded way too close. Don’t they contain even a semblance of common sense in those empty heads? They’ve already set a tree on fire, do they want to send a house to that unfortunate demise, as well?

…

… 25! The crowd outside is getting really rowdy. Some drunks have started singing a wobbly rendition of a pop song. There’s a lot of rapping, but it just sounds like some idiots learning to talk. I cover my head with my pillow in the hopes of blocking out the noise, but all it does is make my head overheat.

… 

… 17! The song is about a break-up, as all pop songs seem to be these days. Ostensibly, it’s about the writer’s many faults versus somebody else’s (the ex, because it’s a break-up song) many perfections; needing to allow new ideas in instead of stubbornly clutching onto the old ones; needing to listen instead of always forcing your opinions out; needing to separate the past and the present and the future. But really, it’s about a break-up. It might actually be a decent song—as far as pop songs go—if they stopped rapping. Why can I still hear them through a window and a pillow?

…

… 14! It’s funny that they’re singing break-up songs today of all days, on the oh-so-sacred New Year’s Eve. Because today is apparently all about moving on and improving yourself and a new slate and all they’re singing about the dude’s hair. Honestly. So much for moving on. It just goes to show how unrealistic the whole idea is, of new years being new chances. It’s like all those New Year’s Resolutions people have every year. They promise to eat less or go to the gym or save money, and then by the end of January, how many people have kept to those promises? That’s right. None.

The last time I even touched those things was in fifth grade when Mrs. Barnby gave the resolutions as winter break homework. There were the typical bunch of resolutions: I will play fewer video games; I will save my pocket money; I will stop tyrannizing my sister. More likely than not, they’d just written down what their parents had suggested. We had to do a progress report, too, to write down if we’d kept to our resolutions, and our parents were to sign our papers verifying our words. The only person who got to a week was Jimmy, who promised to stop eating meat, and that was only because his mother stopped buying meat from the grocery. None of us made it to a month.

… 13! Because however much you might wish otherwise, the past is always with you. Mom always tells people about that time I teased my brother for his yellow teeth; I’ll always remember the talking-to I was given after failing that History test. You can try to change, but then your mother’s going to bring up some instance or other about your tyrannic tendencies and your little brother will pout at you with those huge puppy eyes and you’ll say But I stopped, but they won’t listen, and what’s the point, really?

Except people never seem to understand all that, so whenever I mention anything resembling my ideas, they call me lazy and silly. Just because I don’t think a person can really reform completely, turn overnight from mass murderer to Good Samaritan, doesn’t mean I’m lazy!

… 12! And so I spent all of December trying to ignore the lovely kind Good Samaritans everywhere, giving gifts left and right to make up for their sins any other time, the people who then ignored the beggars on the street as they walked home from donating cheap socks.

December is the season of giving, they say. All I ever see are fakers and obnoxious kids trying to scam as much as they possibly can off of their parents and “Santa.” And invariably, when the kids don’t get everything their greedy minds want, they whine and cry and aren’t grateful enough toward the gift-givers.

… 11! And November was spent trying to ignore the Christmas carols that had already started up around the city, dreading the coming of more fakers.

… 10!

… 9! The first day of school, I’d think, is the only day that should be a holiday. Surely the return to civilization and education from months of wild abandon (a.k.a. summer break) with my personal monster (a.k.a my little brother) should be worthy of some celebration. At the very least, you’re finally meeting up with the friends you’d lost contact with for months. But no, everyone spends the first few days groaning and moaning about the work and waking up early.

… 8!

… 7! July first, my boyfriend and I broke up. He invited me to meet his family on the Fourth of July and I told him that I didn’t believe in the holidays. What was there to believe in, I’d asked him. He listed all the qualities of Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s. I told him that kids only like Thanksgiving because of the break, that Christmas means fakers and useless gifts and overused songs, and that New Year’s resolutions are impossible. He told me I was cynical. I told him to grow up. It was a mutual understanding that we would never work.

… 6!

… 5!

… 4!

… 3! I’d always thought that the boy was sensible. It was one of the reasons I liked him. We met on a plane during spring break and he told me that it was only his second flight, the first being on Christmas Eve of the previous year. He told me that it was the first year he wasn’t home for Christmas and that it wasn’t so bad, not celebrating the day by tradition. I, foolish me, thought that that meant that he could be swayed to my beliefs. 

… 2! February had my sister and cousins and thrice-removed aunts further confirming my deep-seated holiday-hatred by dressing me up for Cupid’s arrow, against all my wishes, despite my many protestations. I’m quite sure they didn’t understand the words “No” or “Stop.” I looked quite like a clown, with bright red cheeks and deep red lips in a pale red dress and a light red bow.

… 1! January was spent in the afterglow of December, with everyone still high on Christmas vibes and New Year’s resolutions. No one wanted to take down the lights, no one wanted to move the tree, no one wanted to return to the everyday. But that afterglow always disappears in a few weeks, sending people back to their old habits without any thought for their precious resolutions.

Flashing fireworks. So, just in case I didn't make it clear enough: I really don’t believe in any such rubbish as holidays.

HAPPY NEW YEAR! And now they’d better shut up.