All this New Years talk got my old brain off and running thinking about the folly of the human race in finding things to celebrate and ways of marking time that really are, given the complete overlay of thought, a total fabrication of inane reasoning. For instance: When I wrote this Legendtorial this past Sunday Morning it was a NEW YEAR. It was also a NEW WEEK, and a NEW DAY. At what point in human history did it become a celebratory event to mark movement from one year to another? Is it just a fabricated reason to party and celebrate to the extent that 65% of the planet’s population wakes up hung over, red eyes, and head pounding as if being beaten with a baseball bat? A celebration established for the benefit of Bayer Asprin or Alka Seltzer? What makes the movement of one year to the next such a time for partying? It is, after all, just another day on the journey of life and will be what each individual chooses to make of it, bad or good. January 1, 2012, still has the same sunshine, or clouds, depending on where you are, as did December 31, 2011. Most of us are still living in the same house, working at the same job, and thinking of pretty much the same things as we did yesterday, last year.
Remember when 1999 was to become 2,000. All the dire predictions for Y2K as they called it. However everything in the world was going to fall apart and go totally haywire. NOT, mind you, because of anything God had done to mark a new century, but because the technology of mankind had not been advanced enough to think about the changing of the century. Think back to that New Year’s eve and the trepidation with which so many looked upon the midnight hour of December 31, 1999. I know of a case where a man was so sure that 2YK was going to devastate the banking system that he withdrew $100,000.00 in cash and put it in his attic to get through those months it would take the banking industry to get back on its feet. Sad thing is, he was killed in an auto accident on December 14, 1999. That is a true story.
The point is, every day, each morning the sun rises is a NEW day. Whether it is January 1st of some year or April 23, June 6, September 25 or whatever, it is a NEW day. Each one of those NEW days is God’s gift to you personally to do with as you see fit. You are in control of your life and what you do with that day is up to you. In church Sunday we sang a hymn entitled “Every Day is a New Beginning”. Is that not a very true statement?
As always, the ultimate bottom line of my Legendtorial is related to racing, although I realize most of you are scratching your heads trying to figure out how I’m relating this to racing. In my mind, warped as it is, that is an easy segway. It is almost the beginning of a new racing season. Back in the day, we would only be a couple of weeks away from the season opener in Riverside California. The teams would be putting the finishing touches on their new cars, most probably factory bodies bought directly from the assembly line in “the white” and taken to the several shops in the Carolinas, Georgia, Virginia and Florida to be readied for Riverside and with great anticipation for Daytona. This time of year for me has been, for more that 50 years, a time of great anticipation. It still is. I still look forward to all the happenings in Daytona as I did in the 60s when things were so different. It is MY sport and this time of year is an exciting time for race fans. Always seems like a long, long time between the last race in November and what is now the beginning of the season in February. But it has given me time to reflect about the past years, and to make resolutions for the New Year.
For kicks, I went to Wickipedia to investigate the origin of New Years Resolutions. All of you should check that out but what I read there influenced me to make the following resolutions. So, here now, are the New Year’s Resolutions of The Legend for 2012.
1. I will not be critical of Darrell Waltrip at any point during the season. I will learn to appreciate the “Boogity, Boogity, Boogity” at the beginning of a race and I will turn UP the volume rather than mute the sound.
2. I will not be criticial of National Anthem singers who forget the words, screech like Ann’s cat the day I slammed the cat’s tail in the door, or scratch themselves in inappropriate areas while attempting to sing the song of our country.
3. I will order several of the “Digger” t-shirts so I can share them with my grandkids and other kids around the neighborhood.
4. I will not be critical of the lack of decent vocabulary known to Kurt Busch.
5. I will join the Kyle Busch Fan Club before the end of January and will stock my candy dishes at home with M&Ms and throw out the Reeses Pieces currently in those candy dishes.
6. I will no longer refer to Carl Edwards as “Duck Boy”.
How about that! See what research on Wikipedia can do for you? Entice you to make resolutions. Wikipedia tells me that a resolution is “a commitment a person makes to a goal for achievement or development”. Or a commitment to reforming a habit the individual, or those around the person, determine needs tweaking. I am told it is a “goal” not a “wish” Resolutions are made, so says Wikipedia, as a way of achieving self improvement. Each and every individual chooses to make his resolutions in areas where others usually point out it is felt a person needs improvement.
Oh, and Wikipedia also says that 52% of the population who make a resolution, or resolutions, fully expect to achieve those goals. Further research on other sites, including, believe it or not, a site by the U.S. Government on resolution research, indicates a higher percentage of the population actually make resolutions for the new year. Wikipedia then goes on to say that within two weeks, 30% of those making resolutions abandon them. After 30 days, less than 12% are sticking to the resolutions. After 60 days, the percentage of those sticking to the resolutions are so small as to be incalculable. Now, do you see why it was so easy for me to make my six resolutions?
I will NOT be complimentary of D.W. for any reason I can anticipate. I don’t like the man, have never liked the man, and have no intention of changing that at this stage. I will continue to mute the Boogity crap and I may even Mute the entire Fox Broadcast and listen on Radio. After all, I hear the other big mouth Waltrip is going to be in the booth this year. As for the National Anthem, I will continue to express disgust to those people who make MY National Anthem some kind of funky, rap, blues, jazzy, unrecognizeable concoction suitable for NOTHING. As for Digger, I would shoot that like rodent with any weapon at hand at any time and in any place.
As for Kurt Busch’s vocabulary, or lack thereof, we can only hope they come out with flesh colored duct tape and keep his mouth taped shut at all times. As for the Kyle Busch fan club, yeah, right. You folks hold your breath for my membership application and check. M&Ms are still banned at my house and anything M&M Mars makes is taboo here. As for Cousin Carl and the Duck Boy label, what the heck. Some of things I’ve heard him called by those much closer to the guy that am I would make me think he would welcome Duck Boy as a nickname. Talked with someone in Mooresville back in December who was with the Rousch-Fenway circus and who had an almost day-to-day encounter with Duck Boy. “Fake” is the word of the day. I was told that Duck Boy takes on one personality in public but quite a different one in private. The “real” Duck Boy, I’m told, makes Hannibal Lector a more appropriate dinner guest than would Duck Boy.
So, you see, I have already blown my resolutions, fake though they were to begin with. Just proving a point here. You can resolve anything you wish, but if you don’t honestly strive to honor those commitments, they are as meaningless as the written apologies the PR people contrive for the Busch Brothers. Bottom line, like it or not, my one resolution will be what I’ve always tried to make it: I will be who and what I am. To those who accept that, we are friends, to those who don’t I will still respect your right to have your opinion, no matter how wrong you are.
Here we are, a new year, a new racing season, but most of all, a new week of Racers Reunion Radio Shows. Let’s all work to make 2012 an awesome year. We have big things coming up and huge accomplishments due, in part, to the efforts of Racers Reunion folks. The return of NASCAR to The Rock in April, the return of racing to Shelby Raceway in North Carolina in April. Those things I can resolve to support.
HAPPY NEW YEAR. Now, go tear up you list of resolutions and join the 88% of us who don’t either bother in the first place or almost immediately forget the resolutions.
