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Britt Combs: Easy-to-keep New Year's resolutions

Impress your friends with your resolve by making a list of things you were going to do anyway and announce them publicly!

COMBS

By Britt Combs | The McDowell News

Published: December 30, 2008

Updated: 12/30/2008 07:40 pm

Well, I've done licked my new year's resolution; I resolved to get my long-overdue expired inspection sticker replaced, and I did it. Fair and square, too. No swapping out windshields or modifying the existing sticker this time. My position as a law-abiding pillar of the community and shining example to the young generation is secure.

I have a friend who, each year, resolves to "live out loud," as she calls it, borrowing the phrase from a movie by that title. By that she means she will be more apt to express her true feelings and emotions to everyone around her without embarrassment or shame. That's a pretty good resolution, provided your feelings and emotions are of interest to anyone around you.

Each year she extorts from me a resolution to watch that movie. I have nothing against the movie, but I just never seem to get around to it. Somehow deep, meaningful movies that change one's outlook on life always wind up on my back burner as seeing the same Humphrey Bogart and Cary Grant flicks over and over take precedence. But, yes, this year I resolve to get in more quality TV time and knock some of my "must see" movies off the list.

Somewhere on that list are old, dusty promises previously extorted by the same friend to watch "Drugstore Cowboy" and "Monsters' Ball." And "Dumb and Dumber." I resolve to watch that one, too.

I resolve to read some books I have never read before. I have millions of books I have never read. I mostly just read Frank Herbert's "Dune" repeatedly. Other than that, all the reading I do is "Go, Dog Go" and "Ten Apples Up on Top." Not because I get so much out of them, but because I foolishly resolved last year to read out loud to my little baby daughter all the time. All right, that's a lie; I think they are among my favorite books of all time, and I enjoy them enormously. There. I resolve not to lie so much. Not quit completely, mind you, but I will cut down considerably.

Is lying bad if you admit right away that it was a lie? What the old ones used to call "telling whoppers?" Like, for example, when you're hiking in the woods with a girl (back before you got married) and just when she is completely give out and has to sit down, you go down the trail a little further, wait a minute, then come running back as fast as possible, hissing "Bear! Bear! Bear!" as you dart past her and sprint all the way back to the car, leaving her in the dust?

I mean, if you admit you were "just funning" as soon as she jumps into the already-moving car with you as you tear out of the parking lot, is that really a "lie?" Like the kind you can go to Hell for? I hope not. I've done that dozens of times and every time it was as funny as the first time. Strangely, I found that most girls have no sense of humor whatsoever.

As I've often said, my funniest jokes are usually the ones where I am the only one laughing.
I resolve to treat this weekly forum as the golden and dear opportunity it is, to put real thought and research into it and to do my very best by you, dear readers. You folks are the greatest and you deserve nothing less than my very best. No more will I slap the column together at the very last possible moment.

I resolve to write a great fiction story and make a fortune off the book before I make it into a screenplay and become the next darling of Hollywood. I further resolve to spend some of the money I make doing that on nice things for my family. Once my financial goals have all been met, I resolve to stop dressing my wife and baby in rags and feeding them old tomatoes and cold cuts I get out of the neighbors' garbage, all the while showering myself with expensive Italian business suits, Scottish kilt accessories, Swiss pocket watches, Irish beer, English sports cars, medieval suits of Spanish armor, lavish Mexican meals, Cuban cigars and Martin guitars said to have once belonged to bluegrass celebrities.

That reminds me: I resolve to get a banjo.

I resolve to cease and desist random midnight phone calls just to ask "Do you have a John there?" of the sleepy answerer. I'm going cold turkey. I resolve to put some pants on each and every time I go out the door, even if it's just a trip to the mailbox or to the corner beer store. And most of all, I resolve that absolutely everyone on my list will get a Christmas card and/or gift, before Christmas, not an e-mail two weeks later. I resolve to judge all men by the content of their character rather than by how much money I think I can get them to loan me. I resolve to put things where I can find them and to completely eradicate silverfish from my library.

McDowell News reporter Britt Combs resolves to be more outspoken about his opinions in the new year and not get a big head just because he is so influential.