Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everybody! Uncle Bubba has a couple resolutions that he wants to put out on the table so that he's more likely to stick to them. The first is probably the more difficult of the two: to stop cursing. He came up in a time when cursing was thought to be a sign of being dim-witted, or as Bubbie's granny used to say, "Cussin' is a neon sign to a shallow mind." Folks reckoned that the use of four letter foul words was due to lack of sufficient vocabulary to express oneself. Well, Uncle Bubba has been disappointed in himself for how easily cuss words slip from his lips; his mouth gets ahead of his brain. It really struck him this Christmas season while shopping, you know, being around the general public in crowded stores, which is hard on a country boy. He was aghast at how often he heard the biggie, the mother of all curse words, the F-bomb being dropped by fellow shoppers. It's become such a casual thing! And it wasn't just lowlife types but middle-class and upper-class teenage girls as they huddled over one another's phones; even within families! It was disturbing and made Uncle Bubba sad when it should have been a joyful time anticipating the celebration of Jesus' birth. Jesus, the one who sacrificed his life to save Bubbie's life from sin, if not us all.

Uncle Bubba knows that it's as much a habit to cuss as anything so it will be a process of listening to what's rolling out of his mouth and the wherewithal to correct it until the habit is changed. It will take an effort but he's up for the challenge. Besides, it's also about his family; he'd want his granny to be proud and he aims to be a good example for his grandbabies.

The second resolution is challenging as well but he presumes will take much longer to engrain it into his lifestyle. As Bubbie put it, he's opting out of so much technology. We all talk about what a time waster it can be, especially folks in his age group when chirping about "lazy" gamers. But how is he any better? It just recently occurred to him that his friends that do nothing with or know very little about technology are busy. Either they don't care to know and are too busy to learn or too busy to learn and too busy to bother: it's the chicken and the egg scenario. Anyway, he realized that back in the day, he'd sit down and look through a magazine. At the end, he'd put the dang magazine down because he'd finished with it and he'd find something else to do. With browsing, there is no end! We spend hours lost in rabbit holes as daylight turns to dark. Well, Bubbie for one has had enough. He's ready for a change. He wants to get up and move, to take action on something, anything; he wants to be busy creating things. He mentioned that he knew that he was swimming against the current because society is moving towards more technology, but he really doesn't care. In Bubbie's view, ya gotta get the blood pumping. Ya gotta act on a resolution, participate in the process. Sure, things will have to be unraveled before being knitted back together but that's the fun of the challenge. I thanked him for his heartfelt New Years wishes and waved goodbye as I walked to my truck, and he yelled to me with a smile and a big wave, "No battle is won by marching backward so advance! And Happy New Year Y'all!"