Bringing In The New Year

Dianna Doles Petry

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I finally have a few minutes to sit down and I thought I'd write a little bit about the way my family brought in the New Year. I think that if you've read any of my work at all, you know that no matter what I plan to do and how well organized my plans are, they just never turn out that way.

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The plans were to do a few things around the house yesterday and then take the whole family out for dinner. Since my mother cannot be out for long and she panics in big crowds, we chose to eat at Shoney's. For those of you who know the Shoney's chain, it is a clean restaurant with average food that is affordable for families. They have a buffet style food bar in the evenings and with growing young men, anything that is all-you-can-eat is the way to go unless you plan to take a mortgage out on the house before you order the food. It is also a restaurant where most of the patrons dress very casually so we can all be comfortable.

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When lunch time rolled around, I sat out a vegetable tray, a deli-tray and a big salad. I explained to the boys and my mother that we were going out for dinner so we didn't need to eat a heavy lunch. I set a six o'clock dinner time thinking that would be early enough to avoid most of the partiers that would undoubtedly find their way to the highway before the midnight hour. After lunch? I? prepared two pans of cheesecake brownies for everyone to snack on as we waited for the ball to drop in Times Square to usher in the New Year.

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Within forty-five minutes of having lunch my mother decided that it was time to get dressed for dinner. Lunch, by the way, had been served around eleven o'clock. I tried to explain that she had several hours before it would be time to leave for dinner but she wanted to get dressed right now...in her brand new red outfit. That was going to be a real problem since she didn't have a brand new red outfit. I tried to get her back into bed but she wasn't going to have that when she wanted to leave for dinner!

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As always, the things she needs to remember she never does and what you wish she would forget, she never does. She kept calling out to the boys to help her find her clothes. They tried to ignore her and she starting calling out to her invisible sailor friend which always makes them laugh. Before long she picked up her walker and carried it to her chest of drawers. (Yes, she carried the walker instead of walking along with it.)

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She got the first drawer open and started tossing out her belongings onto the floor around her. I went in asked her what she thought she was doing. "I'm going to that dance tonight, my good looking sailor is going to be there," she said in a very loud tone of voice, "And I want my new red outfit that YOU got me for Christmas!"

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I opened the second drawer down and said, "Mother, this is what I got you for Christmas." I held up the charcoal gray jogging suit that I had given her. I wish I could describe how excited she looked for a few seconds. "I knew you would find it. I think that sailor hid it 'cause he was afraid I was going to wear it to town and leave him here." She got a mischievous look on her face that made me giggle. If she wanted it to be red, it was going to be red no matter how many people tried to tell her it is gray!

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We moved the dinner hour up to five o'clock. By four o'clock my mother was ready in her "brand new red suit" and lying on her bed "just to rest her eyes." I took advantage of the time to put little smokie links in honey bar-be-que sauce in the crock pot so they could heat up by the time we gathered around to watch the New Year festivities in Times Square. I would prepare other finger foods when we returned later in the evening, or so I thought.

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We made it to Shoney's by 5:25 PM. We were able to be seated very promptly and Chris requested a table in the closed off dining area normally reserved for parties. My mother did not want much so I ordered her a BLT as she requested and the rest of us decided on the buffet bar. The boys got up to fix salads and Chris carried one back for me before doing his own. The waitress came along with cheesy biscuits to place on the table and my mother apparently didn't think she left enough. As the lady started off, my mother said, "Stingy old bat! You be stingy with a tip, too!" The lady turned around and without saying a word, placed more biscuits on the table.

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Once we were all eating, one of the waitresses checked on the table a time or two. Chris, being his normal outlandish and playful self, responded to her "Is everything alright?"

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"Well, I do have one problem," he said. "The holes are obviously larger on the salt shaker than they are on the pepper shaker so I get more pepper than I need and less salt than I want. Can this problem be corrected? I cannot eat the food with the shakers in this condition." He was smiling the whole time and there were at least four plates already stacked up in front of him with the remnants of crab legs, prime rib and vegetables.

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The waitress had a very perplexed look on her face and as the shift supervisor came through, she brought this matter to her attention. Now by this time, they had seated other patrons in the dining area around us and we were all sitting there trying our best not to giggle out loud. No one had ever taken Chris' playfulness this seriously before.

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The shift supervisor looked at the shakers and then looked at the waitress. She turned to us and explained, "Her blonde is natural and does not come out of a bottle." She informed the waitress, "They're all the same, they are universal caps meant to fit any of the shakers."

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As the waitress turned beet red and walked away, the supervisor started to talk to me. Kyle said to Chris, "Here it comes."

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Chris looked at Kyle and said, "I don't know why they do that."

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The supervisor had started to tell me her whole life history and ask for advice. The boys kept eating without missing a beat and I kept noticing my mother out of the corner of my eye. While the supervisor was talking to me, my mother was eating my dinner after she had polished off her BLT.

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Before the supervisor left the table, she informed me that if the waitress came back to refill the sodas or coffee that one of us should ask her about the "butt jiggle dance." The boys looked at each other and shook their heads. There was no way they were going to ask a young lady that didn't seem to be much older than they were about anything that had the word butt included in the question!

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When she did get back to the table, I couldn't resist so I asked her. She squealed out, "Marcy, I am going to kill you!" Then she turned around and had her butt jiggling as she hummed a tune. After she finished that tune, she hummed a different one and again had her butt jiggling in time with the tune. The boys were laughing so hard they could barely keep their food down and my mother was unaware that anything out of the ordinary was even happening. People were in other areas trying to get service and these two ladies were having a good time hanging out at our table.

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We left there about 6:45 PM and headed for home. We were all happy, full and still laughing and replaying the restaurant experience. We were home shortly after seven. The teenagers headed upstairs for a movie fest and I headed to the kitchen to prepare a few finger foods for 11:00 when we would begin the countdown to midnight. I had the television on in the kitchen seating area and as I headed out of the kitchen to go to the living room, I turned it off. At the precise time that I touched the off switch, all of the electricity in the neighborhood went out. "Wow, I thought, that is one serious short in that television!"

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We were left in the dark until midnight had come and gone. I missed Times Square and Dick Clarke all together. No one wanted the 'lil smokies, the brownies disappeared and the other finger foods are still in the fridge. It just isn't the same eating by candlelight with teenagers! There was no heat and Sable was yapping at the shadows the flames of the candles were casting. One of my friends left to go to their house to see if? they had electricity and called back to tell me to bring everybody up there, they had power and television cable. Why we hadn't thought of that hours before is beyond me!

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I got mother up from "resting her eyes" and told her she needed to put her new red outfit back on because we were going somewhere where it would be warmer and she couldn't go out in her nightgown. She looked at me and said, "I don't wanna change and I ain't wearing no red this late at night. Give that gray outfit."

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We all headed for the Jeep after I got her dressed and my cell phone rang. It was my friend? calling to tell me that? their power had just gone out. Back inside we went and I made sure that everyone had plenty of blankets before we called it a night. I flipped the light switches off and left my door open so that I could hear if my mother moved around. I had a flashlight with me and I had given her one but I knew that she wouldn't remember it since it wasn't a normal part of her day.

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When I woke up about three this morning, I was as steamed as the broccoli I was planning to have with the turkey today! I had a pile of blankets on me that would have kept that pea from bruising the princess and the heat had kicked on when the electricity was restored. I checked on my mother and she had stripped down to her Depend and was lying on the top of her blankets....what an image to start off a new year with!

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And that, my friends, is how I brought in the New Year!

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Love,

Dianna Doles Petry

Dianna59@charter.net

http://diannapetry.tripod.com

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