WIT STOP

A NEW YEAR and Another RESOLUTION DISSOLUTION

ON NEW YEAR'S DAY, EVERY FOOTBALL TEAM in America plays every other football team in America... at least once. They're all televised, and every husband in the nation has an obligation to watch. It's the law. New Year's Day ranks as a nonholiday sort of holiday. All of the festivities and celebrating are gotten out of the way the day before on New Year's Eve. Nothing actually happens on the holiday itself, except, of course, for those 53,416 football games on television that all husbands must watch. I usually set aside New Year's Day as the day to break all of my New Year's resolutions. Many people keep their resolutions until February. Some persevere into the second half of the year, past June. A few fanatics even go all year without breaking their New Year's resolutions. Mine last until about 10 A.M. on January 1. No, I take that back. One year, they survived until midday January 2. I was so worn out from the New Year's Eve party that I slept right through the holiday. It was my best year to date, although I don't remember the score of any of the football games on TV that year. Last year was my worst year, but not because of lack of discipline on my part. It was faulty strategy. It was about 11:17 A.M. (I remember the time well because I was watching my 46th football game) when my wife asked me, "Are all your resolutions broken by now?" "They are not," I said proudly. My wife was impressed. She said, "I'm impressed." I said, "That I kept my resolutions?" She said, "No, that you can lie with such a straight face." "What makes you think I'm lying?" I asked. She said, "You've never gone into the afternoon hours of January 1 with a resolution intact. "Aha!" I shouted. "Remember the year I slept right through January 1? I certainly couldn't break my resolutions while I was sound asleep." "Really?" she said. "That's wonderful. Except that your resolution that year was not to sleep past 10 o'clock on any morning of the year. You broke that resolution at 10:01." (Forget everything I said earlier about that being my best year.) "How do you know what my resolutions are?" I asked. She said, "Because you always tell them to me first thing on New Year's Day. You're so sure you're going to keep them that you want to boast." "I tell them to you every year?" "Yes. Even the year that you resolved not to tell anyone what your resolutions were. You broke that one at around 8 o'clock on New Year's morning." She was enjoying my weakness a little too much. I had to deflate her a bit. "You haven't caught me violating this year's resolves yet, have you?" I asked. She admitted, "That's true, I haven't. But that's only because I don't know your resolutions yet." I boasted, "Well, you won't catch me breaking any resolutions this January 1." "And why is that?" she wanted to know. I told her, "Because I didn't make any resolutions this year." "Really?" she asked. I could tell by the way she asked it that she still had a smug belief that she would catch me in a New Year's transgression anyway. "That's right," I said. "My New Year's resolution this year was not to make any New Year's resolutions." She said, "And when did you decide this?" "Last night," I said. She said, "If your resolve was not to make any resolutions, then you broke your resolution not to make any resolutions the moment you made that resolution." "What?" I asked. She repeated, "You broke your resolution last night when you made that resolution." She was right. Oh well, at least it was a new record. Now I could relax and just enjoy the football. Happy New Year. Al