No I have not decided to pack my family inside a wagon and ”go west, young man.” The other night while consuming a “Happy Family” (pizza, not people) at Pie in the Sky with my entire extended family my brother spots a guy sporting a blue “You have died of dysentery” t-shirt. We laughed for about 30 minutes about the 8-bit 2-D computer game that inspired that bit of fashion. At our junior high, it didn’t matter what class you were in (algebra, science, shop), if you finished your work early, your “reward” was to go to the computer lab, where you had only ONE choice of game to play. And that game was “Oregon Trail.” You had to ford rivers, you had to hunt for food, and you had to get across the Continental Divide or face eating your Donner-Party-friends in order to survive. And of course, the greatest threat to your cross-country land speed record for driving a team of oxen: that you would mysteriously acquire “dysentery”…and die. Pretty morbid, I know. But there’s something about an obscure reference to your past that takes you by surprise and keeps you laughing for hours. It was good to have family here for the Holidays.
So the connection between New Year’s Eve and the Oregon Trail? We had to cancel our plans because 3/5 of my clan has um, dysentery. More than you needed to know. But it’s not the kind that will kill anyone. So for that and millions of other things, I am thankful for a good year that now has only 38 minutes left.
Happy New Year, friends. May 2008 find you more fully alive and awake to the adventure than ever before.
