When you make a New Year’s resolution to quit smoking, lose weight or fall in love, you are only fooling yourself.
Expecting a major behavioral change just by turning the page of the calendar might happen in Star Wars but not in real life.
So how about lowering the bar a bit?
As I did last year, instead of making big promises such as spending less money or finally getting organized, I resolve in 2016 simply to avoid repeating the following mistakes:
1. I will no longer do by myself anything for which professionals are licensed and trained.
Like the time I decided to build a garage next to our summer cabin in Wisconsin. What could be so tough? It’s a simple square building that needs no plumbing, heating or air conditioning. I was able to finish the job on my summer vacation.
Except that in November, a neighbor telephoned saying I’d better get up there fast because the first snowfall had begun, and my new garage roof was starting to sag. By the time I arrived, the entire roof had caved in, pulling the walls down with it.
Though the structure was insured, my ego was not. To this day, I still get questioned by acquaintances from the cheese state, chuckling over how that “dang” roof could have been crushed from just 6 inches of snow.
2. I will no longer perform an act merely because it’s a tradition.
This includes the custom of carrying a bride over the threshold, a practice dating from Medieval times, when women did not want to be perceived as being too eager for the marriage bed.
Well, I did not carry my wife through the door of our honeymoon suite at the plush Ramada Inn in 1972. But I did do so five years later with our first home in Evergreen Park.
I got her inside, all right, but then immediately collapsed in agony because I slipped a disk and had to lie paralyzed in bed for four days.
But don’t go blaming Marianne. To paraphrase the song — she ain’t heavy, she’s my lover. More likely, I did not properly bend my knees.
3. I swear never again to let my so-called friend drive my pickup truck.
Ron is a teacher with whom I shared an office for several years. The same guy who, for a “hilarious” practical joke, locked my phone in the filing cabinet one afternoon when my boss kept trying to call me.
On the evening I led him to the parking lot to see my new ride, he seemed genuinely thrilled for me and asked for a test drive.
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Suffice to say, it was shocking to learn that a 5,000-pound Toyota Tundra, with new 20-inch Goodyears and only 15 miles on the odometer, could burn rubber or execute a “wheelie.”
4. In 2016, I will not go fishing without a checklist.
After planning a camping/fishing trip on Lost Land Lake with my friend Tom Booth, we packed the boat with our tent, sleeping bags, clothes, food and fishing gear for three nights of wilderness fun.
Tom held the rope while I backed the boat trailer into the water, then pulled away to park the rig up the hill for the duration of our trip. When I returned, Tom was still holding the rope, but the boat had sunk up to its gunnels because someone forgot to put the plug in.
After pumping out all the water, the two of us voyageurs returned to town, where we spent the entire first day of our adventure in the Moccasin Bar next to the coin-operated laundry, drinking Leinenkugel and feeding quarters into the bowling machine. Our clothes and sleeping bags spent the day in the dryer.
5. Finally, never again will I mess with a car rental agent.
After landing at New York City’s LaGuardia Airport at noon, I told the agent that I was declining the extra auto insurance.
Inexplicably and unnecessarily, I decided to add, for her information, that what they charged per day for collision insurance would total something in the vicinity of $7,000 if someone were to pay it for a year.
To make a long story short, and bring this column to an end, I did not get my car until after 1 p.m. Something about the engine in need of repair, though I suspect it was more about the wise ass from the Midwest in need of a lesson.
David McGrath, a former resident of Evergreen Park and Oak Forest, is an emeritus professor of English at the College of DuPage. [email protected]