A Minnesotan

New Years

Posted

When my sister and I were young children our parents use to do that thing parents do where they tell the kids it's New Years and put you to bed before midnight, but it's really just New Year’s in New York not where you are.

We would stay up late and watch the ball drop at midnight in Times Square on the TV. Yell ‘YAY! It’s New Year’s!’ then promptly be taken off to bed; which we were already ready for.

In reality we only stayed up till about 11 PM. Don’t get me wrong, 11 PM is still pretty late when you're a little kid or if you're like me and choose to get up at 5 AM on a daily basis.

This worked for them until my sister was 9 years old and I was 4 years old.

The reason it worked for my parents that long is because my sister never bothered to look at the clock in the house to see that it was not midnight where we were. She was too caught up in the excitement of what was happening on the TV.

However, that year I had learned about how time works and went to check the clock; using the analog clock because it was 2001. I then proceeded to ruin everything for our parents by pointing out that it was not midnight where we were and that we were being tricked into thinking it was the next year when it wasn’t. It was the next year somewhere else.

After that we got to stay up till midnight CST instead of being tricked into going to bed an hour before the new year.

Now that I’m an adult I understand why my parents did this. After all 2022 I stayed up till midnight then immediately went to bed at 12:01 AM. While I am writing this at the end of 2022 I feel this is also how I will see 2023 as well.