It's Always Midnight in New York Somewhere


LoneCow, originally uploaded by carolsLittleWorld.

It’s tomorrow. It’s yesterday. It’s last year. Oh wait, no, it’s still 2008. I think. Um. Does anybody really know what time it is? I think there’s a cow in this photo. It’s midnight in New York somewhere in the world. It’s always midnight in New York City, isn’t it?

Let me explain. Yesterday, it was New Year’s Eve here in River City. Ah yes, New Year’s. That time of year when everybody celebrates at the stroke of midnight, the passing of the old year into the new. But, here in River City, we have a slight problem with this. Our TV, you see, is all “east coast” time-ish, while our time zone is central, but we celebrate daylight savings time. It’s very confusing that, especially come this time of year.

This time of year, you see, we put the TV on and try to watch the ball drop. And, drop the ball does-promptly at 11 pm eastern standard time. Then, exactly one hour later, they play the ball, that same ball, dropping again, only this time, it’s in central standard time. But, like, it’s not. I mean, it isn’t really-it’s just brought to us via the magic that is the “great” tape delay. So, we watch the ball drop again and we all get up and shout “Happy New Year!” again. But, something odd happens. We see the same people on TV. We watch the same confetti fall, see the same cheery hats and watch the same midnight kisses. It’s a little…sort of…creepy that. Really, it is. But we do it anyway because, well, because it’s New Year’s Eve and what could we possibly have that’s better to do than that? It’s not like we’d rather be out fishing-crap, it’s midnight and who goes fishing at midnight?

This year, what did I do? I feel asleep. Nothing unusual in that, I do that a lot actually. I’m getting old and grumpy and tired, so snooze away I do. But, this year, this year was a bit different. Why? You might ask.

Well, for starters, I watched some TV early on in the night. And, I had planned to stay awake-really I did. I planned to stay up, all through the night and celebrate that big glowing ball dropping from that big neon infested New York square. Really I did. Right up until the point where I feel asleep. Sometime, around maybe 10 o’clock (central time. I think.)

I didn’t sleep all night though. I woke up, with the TV still on, at 3 o’clock in the morning. And what might be on at 3 am you might be wondering? Glad you asked. Yup. You guessed it. It was midnight in New York all over again. I watched the ball drop (again.) I watched my favorite band (as of late) O-A-R play again. I saw some country singers I didn’t recognize and lots of odd tourists in my hometown celebrating the dropping of the ball. But, the ball wasn’t really dropping now, was it? No, I’m guessing it wasn’t. It didn’t. I mean, it did, but not right then. Right then, all the sanitation crews were probably already cleaning up all the confetti, the lost tourists had gone home, the City getting back to normal after a long midnight holiday celebration.

So, there you have it. Sometime, probably the same time as people in places, odd places, you know, places like Guam or Bora Bora, I celebrated my own private little “New Year’s Eve.” Just me and Chase and that silly ball from hometown which, it would appear, keeps dropping without rising yet again. (It goes down, it goes down, it goes down in every time zone, but it somehow never appears to go back up again. Imagine that.)

Now I say to you, my great snowflakes one and all, I wish you the happiest of Happy New Year, really I do. Where ever you are, whatever you might be doing, I really do wish you a happy 2009. And I hope that you got to see your own private “dropping of the ball” in your own special way because, I must admit, though it was 3 am, it was quite fun to celebrate that passage of time.

Well? What are you waiting for? Yes, that’s a cow and hurry, quick, go celebrate! It’s always midnight in New York somewhere in the world. Isn’t it?

Until next, um, year maybe? I guess…

Share:

2 Comments

  1. mythopolis
    Author
    January 2, 2009 / 11:57 pm

    After watching the news all week before New Year’s eve with daily up-dates on the preparation of the ball to be dropped and how it was the latest and greatest of balls to ever be dropped, I started getting scared. This is going to be so spectacular that I don’t know if my aging ticker will be able to withstand the degree of astonishment. So I went to bed early that night. : )

  2. Carol
    Author
    January 4, 2009 / 10:54 pm

    You too, eh?

    It was a pretty ball. It was even prettier that I got to watch it fall at 3 am.

    Ever notice how all strange and glorious things seem to happen at 3 am?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *