Last year, I was standing around about midnight when everyone shined their New Year’s resolution spotlight on me and I choked. They had amazing resolutions. One guy said he was going to fly to Cote du Rhone and teach tourists how to properly pronounce the name of the island. Another guy said he was going to change to an all-foraged diet, taking his food directly from the land, like our ancestors. My wife said she was going to try to see the miraculous in the mundane. They looked at me and I blurted out, “I’m gonna climb mount laundry.”
And I was serious.
This year I’ll be ready for them. After everyone’s plied the room with hippy manifestos, I’m going to reveal my short list of New Year’s resolutions I will actually keep.
I will fix that one doorknob. It fell off the door six weeks ago. I don’t know how a doorknob falls off a door. Maybe it jumped. Maybe it couldn’t take it anymore. I know I can’t take it anymore after going through an entire junk drawer of things that will fit in the hole to open the door to the basement (spatula, turkey baster, raw carrot).
I will invent growable shoes. We moved into Niketown last year after realizing it was the most cost effective way to keep my Sasquatchian son properly shod. The view sucks, but we get a new pair of shoes every day. It would be easier, and we could go back to living in casa de dirty clothes, if I could just stick his feet in a vat of nanogoop, which turns into a pair of shoes that grow along with his feet.
I will shave my dog. There is no part of my life without dog hair in it. It’s in my towels, my toothbrush, my burritos. I found a dog hair in an ice cube yesterday. I love my dog. He’s beautiful, like Lassie, but he sheds like a dog-hair yard sprinkler, and I can’t take it any more. Is he going to look post-apocalyptic? Yes. Will I care? Are you kidding me?
I will stop going to McDonalds when the kids can’t agree on what I’m going to cook for supper, and I’m too tired to care if they gain 300 pounds. Taco Bell’s better anyway.
I will scale mount laundry, and at the top, I will plant an underwear flag. I will build a small house from discarded Tide lids. I’ll sew drapes from dryer sheets. I’ll plant a small garden on my son’s dirty jeans and grow cabbage. It’ll be peaceful, quiet. I’ll paint pictures of the view (I can see all the way to the basement bar and empty VHS box graveyard) and sell them to passers-by for a pittance. They’ll sit with me for tea, and I’ll tell stories about my journey from the floor, up the ravine of ironic T-shirts, through gym shorts pass, and rappelling across the great tube sock divide.
Chris Garlington lives in a standard two kids, wife, dog, corner-lot, two-car dream package. He drives a 2003 Camry, sports a considerable notebook fetish, and smokes Arturo Fuente Partaga Maduros at the Cigar King as often as possible. His stories have appeared in Florida, Orlando, Orlando Weekly, Catholic Digest, Retort, Another Realm, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, South Lit, and other magazines. His short story collection, “King of the Road,” is available on Amazon. His column, “My Funny Life,” was nominated for a national humor award. He is the author of the infamous anti-parenting blog, Death By Children; the anti-writing blog, Creative Writer Pro; and co-author of “The Beat Cop’s Guide to Chicago Eats.”
