New Year, a Dead Deer and Happiness

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When I was a kid, New Year’s Eve was one of my favorite celebrations. All of my mom’s immediate family lived in the same town as us and we got together often to celebrate holidays, birthdays and sometimes, for no reason at all. She would make this incredible spread of the most delicious appetizers and everyone would come over and actually stay until after midnight. Sometimes we split into teams and played Trivial Pursuit and I would marvel at how smart my uncles and my mom were and how they just knew stuff. Other times, my dad and uncles would play Risk in the sunroom, my mom, grandma and aunts would talk and play cards in the dining room and my cousins and I would all hang out and play Uno until it was time to toast the New Year and sing Auld Lang Syne, in a circle, holding hands. Of course, Dick Clark was always in the background of all the loud laughter, teasing and board game trash talk. It was beautiful and fun and festive because the tree and all the Christmas lights were still glowing and we had a family that loved to laugh and spend time together. After midnight, all the adults would leave and us kids would have a big slumber party in the living room, watching the same movies every year. For the most part, I did this until I was pregnant for the first time- I was 27.

I may have missed a couple of those celebrations, but not many. I don’t remember what I did instead, except for one year in particular. I was in my early 20’s and my brother, Sam and I were in Mexico with our grandparents. That was a great New Year’s Eve because he drank too much champagne and ended up on the dance floor with this little Mexican man from the Mariachi band. I so wish I had a picture of that. I would happily pay to have that image plastered all over the city buses where he lives. Billboards? Yes, please! Paint a mural on the old downtown buildings? Sure!

Yes, old New Year’s Eves were such fun!

But now I am tired.

I was laying in bed this morning, thinking about what my hopes were for the next 12 months, setting minimal goals, so as to not set myself up for disappointment, when the thought of New Year’s Day 2019 came to mind… I was letting our dogs out the back door and noticed something laying on the sidewalk on the other side of the fence, between our yard and the neighbors’. It was a deer. It had probably been hit on the street behind our house and dragged its broken, mangled body to our sidewalk, where it collapsed and died. So… happy New Year to us!

That day it didn’t make me chuckle- it made me kind of sad, just because I like animals and I hate to see them suffer. (Although not so much that I feel like I should be a vegetarian. In fact, when I drive along a pasture of cows, my mind wanders to a juicy Porterhouse, grilled so flawlessly that the fat just melts in my mouth.) But here’s this poor deer, who was hit by a car and managed to stagger away from the road to just plop down and expire without so much as morphine or a family member there to console him. It just made me feel woeful, even though the boys were happy to run out and investigate and study it.

Boys are gross.

I called the City of Bettendorf on January 2nd, when the offices opened, and explained that I had this carcass out on the sidewalk and could someone please come and remove it. After proving that the deer was actually on City property and not my personal property (and thank heavens, because even though it’s a cute furry deer, what the hell am I supposed to do with its dead self?), they agreed to come and pick it up. I’m not sure what I thought would happen next. Was I under the unreasonable impression that two men from the local funeral home, wearing the appropriate dark gray or black, would show up with white gloves and carefully and gently place the deer in a coffin and provide it with the proper, respectful services my illogical thoughts felt it deserved? Is that really what I had in mind when I called the City? Because if it was, it was a pretty inaccurate representation of what actually happened.

What actually happened was slightly painful to watch and I’m pretty sure Marisa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny style would’ve been out there having words with the city guys who, by the way, were wearing fluorescent yellow vests and not black suits.

“Imagine you’re a deya. You’re prancin along, you wanna to get to the otha side of the street and BAM! A f*&%ing cah slams into your sweet, innocent, hahmless, leaf-eating, doe-eyed body! Ya leg is broken and ya insides are now on ya outside, so you crawl closuh to the neighbuhhood houses to die quietly on the sidewalk. Now I axe ya. Would ya want some fluorescent yelluh-wearin schmuck to come along and drag ya down the sidewalk and throw ya in a gahbage truck?”

But that’s exactly what happened. I heard a noise later in the morning and saw an actual garbage truck in my cul-de-sac. ‘Huh,’ I thought, innocently, ‘it’s not garbage day.’ And then the realization hit me like a two by four to the forehead. “Noooooooooo. They’re taking the deer away in a garbage truck?” I said out loud to myself, as I stared in disbelief out the window at the scene that was unfolding before me. I watched the two guys walk down the sidewalk and put the deer on a tarp. Then they dragged the tarp to the truck, which had backed up to the curb. I watched each of them grab two hooves a piece and then I quickly turned my head and squeezed my eyes shut because I knew exactly what was coming-

THUD.

I could actually picture it in my head. They probably swung it back and forth a few times, shouting, “ONE! TWO! THREE!” and then they laughed while they watched its four- well three whole legs and one, broken, mangled leg- flail through the air and into the back of the truck. Then they probably laughed and high-fived each other.

Animals.

Back in 2019 that made me a little sad. But laying here in bed, on the first day of 2021, I found myself chuckling. Maybe that’s because 2020 was such a downer, that I now possess a more demented and warped sense of humor than I had before and find a lot of things funny that I probably shouldn’t. I recently laughed out loud in a setting of several people at something that no one else found funny. You know that saying, “laugh, and the world laughs with you”?

Yeah. That’s crap.

At first I was slightly embarrassed because everyone turned and looked at me, but then I decided ‘this is who I am now’. I laugh at weird and often inappropriate shit. And I gave everyone a shrug and laughed again.

So that is my wish for all of you this new year… that you find humor in lots of places, even if no one laughs with you. Watch the funny shows, listen to the funny guys on the radio, spend your time with the people in your life that make you laugh and don’t look at you weird when you do, don’t be embarrassed if you snort a little and don’t be afraid to make others chuckle. Laughter makes us beautiful and there’s too much great stuff in the world to ignore it.

Happy, New Year, Readers.

Happy, happy New Year.