Happy 2-0-1-4!

My goodness, it's the New Year al- ready!

2014. The year my little brother enters high school, my cousin and two of my best friends pass on to the netherworld known as "col- lege", and that ancient can of hominy tucked in the back of our pantry finally goes bad.

It will be stamped on the prom invitations my class passes out this spring, and glitter-painted on the home- coming posters we plaster in the school hallways come fall. It will crouch in fifty- two weeks' worth of Times margins, over election re- sults and football victories and birth notices. And when I finally come face-to-face with the dreaded SAT, that date will be sitting placidly next to those three fear-in- spiring letters.

2014.

It will see me scrambling to keep my perennial set of resolutions - get organized, exercise more, make time to write for fun - while juggling a couple new ones, such as "Learn to detect sarcasm" and "Make peace with your little brother's electric drumset". These first three will last an aver- age of two weeks. But that drumsethellip;

In a bit less than a week, I will go to the first Knowl- edge Bowl meet of 2014. After that, in February, will come the first big Knowl- edge Bowl meet of 2014, an all-area competition in the Tri-Cities where we can butt heads with 3-and-4-A schools. (I'll bet you my bus ticket back to Waitsburg that Hanford wins.) And then comes Regionals 2014 (with a wild-card competitor from north of Yakima dropping in to spoil our painstakingly plotted plans for a secure victory) - and, hopefully, State 2014.

Spring Break 2014, should this happen, will be spent soaking my overex- erted cranium in a bucket of ice water.

Waitsburg Celebration Days will roll around. For the first time in two years, I'll get to go to the parade and justhellip;watch. Watch the floats and the horses, the queens and the princesses, and those four digits - 2-0- 1-4 - which will have found their way onto every single entry in the whole dang procession.

Junior year will wind down. The Uggs will mi- grate back into the closet; the Vibrams, followed by sandals, will emerge. There will be tests, including the Test That Must Not Be Named. Finally, the day will come when I follow my standard routine for closing out an academic year: clean out my locker, donate any fossils I might find to the science department, swing my overstuffed backpack over my shoulder, and hoof it home.

Summer will come. I will eat far more popsicles than is responsible and spend most of my discretionary time rubbing aloe into my sunburns. I will successfully forget what year we're in, but will usually have a vague idea what month it is. At the end of August, I will have prolonged conversations with my cousin during what by then will have evolved into an aloe bath, giving her utterly unqualified advice on how to maneuver her favorite easy chair into her new dorm.

School will start up again, and I will realize with a jolt that I am now a senior and my life as I know it will end within twelve months. In order to cope, I will take up yoga.

My little brother, by now a freshman, will join the football team. Every day after practice, he will come home and dump his sweaty socks in the middle of the hall. Then he will retreat into his room and bang away on his electric drumset, which I still will not have made peace with.