A Slacker's Year In Review
 

January 4 2006
Counterbias.com
by Susan Shafer
 

In the misguided years of my early adulthood, I made solemn resolutions at the beginning of each new year with hope that I would become a more enlightened person. The promises would change mid-year, usually in the form of lowering my expectations, and at the end of the year they were all but forgotten. On December 31^st , I would berate myself and feel like a total failure. As I neared my 40^th year, I stopped with the promises altogether. I mean, if we really wanted to do those things or thought we actually could, wouldn’t we just do them automatically without making dramatic teary-eyed pronouncements to our friends on New Year’s Eve?

Now, I have a much better system of measuring my self-worth. I hold myself up against the elite and revered members of our society, the movers and shakers, celebrities, athletes and politicians who set the standard for American behavior. In this spirit, I offer my annual list of all the things I have not accomplished this year, in no particular order of importance. By its sheer length, this list should make me feel like a total and complete failure. For some reason, it doesn’t.

#1.  I didn’t declare bankruptcy, nor did I bankrupt any major corporation, causing lifetime employees to lose their life savings.

#2.  I didn’t torture anyone and allow my misdeeds to be captured on film for my future scrapbooking endeavors.

#3.  I sent no minority children into an ill-conceived war.

#4.  I didn’t vanish while jogging and pretend to be kidnapped in order to avoid marrying my boyfriend.

#5.  Speaking of marriage, I didn’t try to change my state’s Constitution in order to deprive some people I don’t like of the right to be legally married.

#6.  I didn’t jump up and down on anybody’s couch or berate a respected talk show host because his beliefs are different than mine. Well, I jumped up and down on my mother’s couch, but it wasn’t this year.

#7.  I didn’t say to the national media that we ought to just go ahead and execute the president of Venezuela.

#8.  I didn’t nominate any of my unqualified friends for a position on the Supreme Court. I didn’t even nominate them for president of the PTO.

#9.  I didn’t marry anybody for only four months, have an affair with the nanny, or wed somebody less than half my age.

#10.  I didn’t start a bar brawl, (at least not one that was televised,) nor did I throw a cell phone at anybody. This is perhaps why I still haven’t gotten a cellular phone; they’re downright distracting.

#11.  I didn’t try to change any laws so that I could gain control of a grieving family’s brain-dead child. 

#12.  I didn’t drop bombs on people I don’t know or kill anyone in a training incident. Come to think of it, I didn’t kill anyone at all.In case I haven’t mentioned it, I didn’t torture anybody, either. Not physically, anyway.  

#13.  I didn’t steal money from the taxpayers, get caught in a money-laundering scheme, or run for office. (Not to imply that the three are connected….)

#14.  I didn’t join a cult, promote a cult on national television, or insist that my “alternative religion” is not a cult.

#15.  I didn’t interrupt a disaster relief gala in order to proclaim to the American public that George Bush doesn’t care about black people. But damn, I wish I’d thought of it!

#16.  I didn’t go on trial for child molestation or blinding, torturing, and killing. Oh, I already said I didn’t torture anyone.

#17.  I didn’t buy an outrageously expensive vehicle that was intended for armored military transport, use it to drive my kids to school, then complain that it only gets three miles to the gallon.

#18.  I didn’t camp outside the Vatican during Pope John Paul’s funeral and sell ashtrays bearing the likeness of the esteemed pontiff. My dad always said I don’t have what it takes to be an entrepreneur. 

#19.  I took no steroids, posed for no mug shots, developed no eating disorders, threw no beer on a professional athlete, and entered no rehab facility. My future is indeed looking bleak.

#20.  Finally, I spent most of my year showing up for work. I don’t know why I didn’t just hide out at my ranch and chop wood or shoot endangered birds, but something compelled me to show up at my job every day.  Dismal failure.

When I read my list of non-accomplishments, a small smile begins to form and I remember why I stopped making those lofty resolutions. What if I did actually accomplish something monumental that would catapult me into the national spotlight?  Would I be remembered for it the rest of my life?  If I hold myself to the same standards as those Americans we see in the news every night, then I am a complete and miserable failure.

All in all, I’d say it was a very good year.

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Susan Shafer is an elementary school librarian in Houston, Texas. She can be contacted at Pgeturner@ev1.net.