This year

This year has been good for me in many ways.

First, I love and am loved. Even God loves me.

I was seldom cold and hardly ever hungry this year. I have plenty of clothes to wear and access to plenty of fuel to burn.

I only hemorrhaged a little, and no internal bleeding at all! Not bleeding profusely is good. No bones broken, either.

I wasn’t shot, stabbed, or beaten severely, and neither was anyone I know. If they had been, I would know; somebody would have called me. When I began to wean myself from television news, probably the thing that made the most difference was realizing that if something bad happened to someone I knew, someone else we both knew would call to tell me. I didn’t have to watch the news to see if all my friends were OK, because if they weren’t, I would find out anyway. What a relief.

And my house wasn’t destroyed by a brushfire or a tornado or rising floodwaters. In fact, my house gets nicer all the time.

I didn’t go blind or deaf—although I’m on my way—and I still get around fairly well. I can still walk and ride a bike, although no longer at the same time.

There were no unsightly growths hanging from my face or other parts of my physique. That would be unpleasant. I had no long-term, intractable pain.

When I went home after a hard day’s work, I knew how much better that is than looking for work.

I used to work with a woman about whom the best thing I could think of was that when I went home and put my feet up to relax, she wasn’t there. I’m still happy about that.

I’m glad that no military cultists dropped exploding metal on me from the sky. I contributed to a bomb or two, I suppose.

Nobody’s hacked off my hands or feet because I didn’t obey them, and there are no photographs of me picking my nose on the magazine covers at the grocery check-out.

I haven’t been shot at one time this year. Not once.

I wasn’t blackmailed with pictures of me with a minor of either gender in a felonious relationship. I would hate it if that happened.

I’ve still not run across, or even heard of, any land mines around Chico, either. I like that about this area. We didn’t think to ask about land mines, either. We were lucky.

I have old friends, both kinds—old people who are my friends and friends I’ve have for a long time. Nowadays there’s a lot of overlap.

I’m not compelled to do something politicians have outlawed, I wasn’t arrested or imprisoned, and some people smile when they see me. Nobody you know.