Basic Black

Cheers, everyone! I am just embarking on my second year without the lubricating accompaniment of alcohol - and frankly it hasn't been all that tough. Oh, booze and I were a hot item for years, but there comes a time in a lot of relationships when one of you looks across the pillow or the dance floor — or the rim of a wineglass — and realizes: 'You know what? This ain't fun anymore'.

So far, not drinking has been strictly a losing proposition for me. I lost twenty-five pounds, the blear in my eye, the fog in my brain and my visceral hatred for alarm clocks.

Pretty smooth sailing — but there is one time of year that's a bit sticky for non-drinkers. It's the one we just passed through - Christmas/New Years. Chanukah. Yuletide. Kwanzaa - whatever you call it, it slides through all of our lives tumultuously and inexorably, gliding on a veritable Niagara of hooch.

Booze is everywhere and virtually everybody drinks at that time of year. Heck, my abstemious Aunt Beulah has her annual bumper of sherry every New Year's Eve while we crowd around the TV to see if Times Square technicians can jump start Dick Clark one more time. There's even a dedicated libation for the season. Does anyone drink rum and egg nog at the cottage? On a picnic? After the Grey Cup parade? Of course not. You drink rum and egg nog in the stretch around Christmas and then you never hear of it until the next Christmas rolls around.

And people want you to drink the rum and egg nog. They expect it. Refusing rum and egg nog is kind of like repudiating Dickens or blaspheming Santa. It's not done.

"HOW DO YOU WANT YOUR EGG NOG, BUDDY - LITTLE NUTMEG? HOW ABOUT A CINNAMON STICK IN THERE?

"Ah, no...just the egg nog please and ah...no rum."

"NO RUM??? WHADDYA MEAN, NO RUM!"

This year though, resisting the rum and egg nog wasn't much of a challenge because I was too busy during most of the holidays. Busy with the snow dump. Then busy with the snow dump on the snow dump. And the power outages. And the dead telephone. And the downed Internet. And the non-delivery of newspapers and mail for five days. And the rain that followed the snow dumps. And the ice build-up in the eaves troughs that followed that. I've never actually seen rain come directly through the ceiling before.

What with being snowed in, iced over and rained on, dodging rum-laced egg nogs at seasonal shindigs was the least of my problems.

Ah, but it was all worth it on Christmas morn, which dawned bright and dry. I lay in my bed thinking peaceful thoughts, listening to the dogs on the floor snoring softly. As Christmases go, it wasn't so bad, I thought. Only five, maybe six near-disasters. But that's over now, and here I am, with the sun shining through the window, the birds twittering in the cedars... ...and with just the vaguest, slightly unpleasant aftertaste of - what is that? Oh, yes —eggnog — in my mouth.

Which is when I realized that I had mere seconds to get to the bathroom before I would become violently, spectacularly ill. In Technicolor.

Let us draw the curtain of propriety on the rest of that particular Yuletide surprise. I will just say that not only was I sick, I was ricocheting-off-the-walls dizzy. Too dizzy even to rise from my place of worship at the porcelain altar for oh, forty minutes or so. So I lay on the tiles and pulled the bathmat around my shoulders.

I was actually feeling much better by the time the doctor arrived a few hours later. "Sounds like food poisoning," she said. "What did you have last night?"

"Well, egg nog," I said.

"Ah hah!" she pounced, making a six-gun with her thumb and forefinger and metaphorically popping me between the eyes. "Did you have it with rum?"

No, I said. Just egg nog. "Too bad," said the doctor. "Rum would have killed the bacteria."