Where has the time gone? I guess it’s back there somewhere in some of my Facebook posts.

All I have to do is scroll down and it’s all there, trapped in cyberspace, although it looks like all I post anymore are my Wordle scores. Dear me, it makes me look like I don’t have a life.

Au contraire, mi amigo. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. If there’s one thing that we – and I don’t mean the editorial or royal “we” – love to participate in, it’s a conversation. A quick hello or cómo estás can turn into a 20-minute chinwag about the weather, food, the mayor, or how somebody did somebody wrong … but more times than not, we swap stories about our aches and pains.

I’m speaking here from the viewpoint of someone staring at their golden years in the mirror, but it applies, I believe, to anyone past somewhere around their mid-forties. It’s no longer a question of staying healthy. It’s a question of discovering a malady you like.

Me? Well, sit right down and let me bore you with what secrets my MRI found out about my innards. Who among us can say they haven’t experienced that fun medical wonder machine that peeks into your corporeal form without those pesky roentgens of an X-ray. It’s a high-tech look-see that ranks up there with death and taxes, for sooner or later, we end up going through that big doughnut with the clank-clank-clank. Yours truly had to don one of those flimsy hospital gowns in my sock feet earlier this year, and what it showed resulted in a three-month medical ordeal, which pretty much took up my entire summer.

I can tell you all about it in detail. If you’ve got the patience.

But never mind all that; this is the time of year when my noggin gets soggy on eggnog, so instead of trying to write something profound and meaningful, I usually end up reviewing the past year’s stuff.

For instance, the lexicographers at Merriam-Webster Dictionary have announced their Word of the Year. I was hoping “please” and “thank you” would be the chosen words of the year – maybe por favor and gracias – but no. This year’s word of the year, according to Merriam-Webster, is, drum roll please, …. authentic. They say its popularity was “driven by stories and conversations about AI, celebrity culture, identity, and social media.”

Not to be out-clicked, the Oxford and Cambridge dictionaries have chosen their words of the year as well.

Oxford has chosen “rizz,” one of those hip, new, trendy terms to define style, charm, or attractiveness; in other words, the “skill of charming or seducing a potential romantic partner.”

As for the Cambridge Dictionary, the word of the year is hallucinate, adding the following to its standard definition: “When an artificial intelligence hallucinates, it produces false information.” I get it. That explains the AI in my car’s GPS.
And so it goes.

I’m laying low these days, mulling how to wrap up the year besides binge-ing on shows and movies. For one, I am bound and determined to finish the Barbie movie. I’ve found that I can only take pink in small doses.

Needless to say, chillin’ is what my New Year’s will be like. I’ve never been one to stay up late and whoop it up at a New Year’s Eve party, at least not since my kids were born and not much before that. By the time the clock strikes midnight this Sunday, I will have been blissfully asleep for a couple of hours, awakened only by the fireworks down the block.

Regardless of your celebratory druthers, make sure you follow the time-honored good luck superstitions for the new year. Remember to sweep the floor toward the outside of the house to drive out everything bad, like making a clean start. Some people believe that what a person does on the first day of the year foretells what they will do for the remainder of the year, so one might want to behave. Also, keep in mind that the first guest to cross your threshold – what the Scottish branch of my family tree calls “first foot” – may bring good fortune for the year. Or, the obverse.

Otherwise, try eating 12 grapes at the moment the countdown to midnight begins (to represent your 12 wishes for the coming year). Eating collard greens, black-eyed peas, lentils, pomegranates, and/or cornbread on January 1 is also supposed to bring good fortune. You might as well add green chile while you’re at it.

Oh, and don’t forget the old custom of wearing red underwear to attract love.
But I’m not so sure about that last one. I got no rizz.

John Larson, El Defensor Chieftain