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Happy New Year!
The New Year has officially begun with fanfare all over the country. We have, at last, embarked on the 2010 college football season, which ushers in a whole new year full of potential.
Nothing is more beautiful than potential. Potential is why we love babies so much; lives so freshly formed that not a single mistake has yet been made, not a single choice has been regretted. Nothing lays ahead but opportunity. We look into a chubby baby face, and all we read on it is a story waiting to be told.
Looking into the chubby baby face of this New Year, I resolve to live it better than the last, better than 8 and 5.
I resolve to slow down and take time to appreciate all the colors of fall: the purples and golds, the oranges and blues, the reds and the blacks.
I resolve to think at least three nice thoughts about the ACC. I might not bring myself to say them aloud, so trust that I'm straining to think them.
I resolve to dislike Florida 100 percent more than I disliked them last year and to cheer 100 percent louder when Alabama rolls their red tide all over Florida's orange a ... scuse me I'm forgetting myself.
I resolve to always maintain ladylike dignity even when dealing with chickens and pigs and other unmentionable NCAA vermin. I will be polite and tolerant of other team's dumb mascots and the people who cheer for them. I realize not everyone had the good sense to get himself born a Bulldog.
I resolve to brainwash my children to the point they crave Athens so badly they would crawl there on their bellies with two broken legs if they had to. I'm counting on that kind of motivation to help them get there the stand-up way: earning the grades and walking in through the arches.
I resolve to help my children memorize their Bible verses right after I help them memorize their Lewis Grizzard-isms: "I'm Bulldog born, Bulldog bred, and when I die by-God I'll be Bulldog dead."
I resolve to learn how to boil peanuts.
I resolve to educate my mother, who scoffs at football and its power to persuade people to postpone their Saturday productivity, on the game-day's importance to civilization; to help her understand that football makes the world a better place, bringing thousands of citizens together for a single-minded purpose. As Bear Bryant once said, "It's hard to rally around a math class."
I resolve to return my daddy's parking pass to him in a timely manner . . . or by the Friday before the next home game.
I resolve to learn the names of at least five players, other than kickers and quarterbacks.
I make all these resolutions because nothing is more beautiful than potential, and the football New Year, in its glorious infancy, has beautiful potential. I know because I saw it in baby-faced Aaron Murray on the playing field just last Saturday.
(Lucy Adams is a syndicated columnist, freelance writer, and author of If Mama Don't Laugh, It Ain't Funny. She lives in Thomson, GA. E-mail Lucy at lucybgoosey@aol.com and visit her web site, www.IfMama.com.)
