New Year's Restitution

It's said that resentment of other people is like you drinking poison in hopes that they'll die. So in the interests of starting fresh with this brand spanking new year I would like to ease the petty resentments built up over the past twelve months:

Driver in the white Subaru two months ago on Western Ave. -- please forgive me for whatever it was I did that caused you to pull up beside me and the boys on the way to school then scream through the window while you flipped us off. I in turn will stop searching for you and fantasizing how I'll punish you. We're good now.

I forgive all of you who have written me with your cancer and car crash stories to get my autograph or a book which you put on eBay two weeks later for seventy-nine cents. It's embarrassing for both of us and I know you'll forgive me for trying to bid up the price.

To the coyote who ate our cat -- we forgive you. Everybody has to eat. And just so you know; our new cat is nothing but gristle. And she carries a gun.

To all the mice in the basement -- this isn't over yet. Be afraid. Be very afraid. (the author apologizes for this ungracious remark, but it needed saying.)

To the inventor of the blister pack -- I'm sure you are insanely rich and living somewhere surrounded by personal assistants who open your products for you. I therefore forgive you for not understanding the carnage you have spread through the world as we try to break into your clever achievement with teeth, knives and screwdrivers - dislodging dental work and self-administering deep puncture wounds and jagged lacerations.

Santa Claus, I forgive you for bringing our 8yr old a full drumset. He's actually pretty good and it's more fun than you'd think to play old Credence songs with a third grader.

And the weather. I'm so done with being annoyed about you. The rain all summer; hurricane Irene; that other storm-with-no-name right after; the balmy fall and snowless Christmas; and today -- the first glimpse of a new year shrouded in fog and still as an action toy trapped inside a blister pack. I'll break into it somehow. And start anew. And mess some things up. And apologize about a year from now. Forgive me.