Last words from Karin Brynard
If she had a cent for every New Year’s resolution she has broken in her lifetime, says Karin Brynard, she’d be a millionaire by now.
CCome February each year and I’ve already broken all my New Year’s resolutions. And I’m not even talking about my new New Year’s resolutions. I’m talking about the old ones, those musty old nags I’ve been dragging from the dungeons of my mind for years now; dusty and moth-eaten they emerge every year at midnight on New Year’s Eve. I polish them up a bit with a delusionary daydream or two. But before you can say ‘Jack Robinson’, they’re back in the catacombs where they’ll hide for another year.
I’m referring to those golden oldies like more exercise, less bread and sugar, no more swearing or foul language.
The longest they’ve ever lasted was one morning – between wake-up and breakfast, to be precise. Maybe you know the feeling: you’re still reeling from last night’s revelries and suddenly you realise you have aches in strange places (one year it was severe bum pain, until I remembered that I’d – heaven forbid – accidentally twerked when I intended to twist!).
Then you remember how during the course of the festivities you loudly brayed and bragged with your wonderful New Year’s resolutions. Now you look at the clock with bleary eyes and suddenly it hits you: you’ve slept right through your first resolution – jogging and getting fit. And then you swear. Bam! Double bam! The first saintly intentions have just thrown themselves under the proverbial New Year’s bus.
By the time you stumble into the kitchen, the next one goes up in a puff of smoke: you grab a slice of bread from the breadbin and push it into your ancient toaster.
You stand there for 10 minutes, watching that decrepit old toad of a toaster first ignoring the bread and then, in the 11th minute, charring it to a crisp. You fling some curses at the damn thing. But its impassive demeanour sends you over the edge. You drop the next slice of bread in and press down the old lever with brute force. Now you’re searching for words from ancient Sanskrit with which to humiliate the miserable device. You tell it how people will soon be landing on Mars, while it’s still mucking about in order to brown a simple slice of bread.
Then the self-recrimination begins – you scold yourself for having been too lazy to bloody well go out and buy a new toaster. You don’t have enough order and discipline in your life. Your cupboards are a mess; the tinned food is years past its sell-by date. And you never have candles when it’s load-shedding…
Actually, you should just turn right around, sommer now, and follow the musty old ponies back to last year, back to oblivion.
Now you’re officially depressed. You’ve broken so many rules, you may as well throw in the towel.
But, fortunately, I’m an optimist. I cheer myself up with some new New Year’s resolutions. And a new set of rules. Number one, of course, is to keep your mouth shut: the minute you blab, you jinx your new-new resolutions. They just never materialise, plus you’re forever reminded about them by others. Rule number two is baby steps: if you set the bar too high, you’re doomed right from the start. Number three is incentive: you follow the carrot method, rather than the stick. Reward yourself for good behaviour.
For instance: you’re going to be more affable, more goodnatured. At first, only with the toaster. Baby steps, remember? If you succeed, you get one slice of bread. And say you went and bought a new toaster too and didn’t lose your cool at the laughable prices, you get jam on that slice. Now you try some kindly consideration in traffic: no more name-calling; the worst that comes out of your mouth is ‘silly clown’.
But ja, hey? You try. And sometimes you last until the schools start and all the silly clowns are back from the seaside. Then it’s all downhill from there; the dumb old nags in the catacombs get new stablemates. And me? I’m left all alone to fend for myself. But I’m quietly planning for the new-new New Year. Just 10 months to go. See you there.