What's So Special About 40 Years?

For the fourth year in a row, I start off the year wading through op-eds, editorials, columns, and blogs comparing this year to the one 40 years ago. If I hear 1968 identified once more as the greatest year of the greatest decade, I may start sending e-mail traffic to the perpetrators. Nothing elaborate, just 600-point type, in multiple fonts, repeating the simple statement: "1968 wasn't that great!"

For that matter, 1965 and 1966 had their moments, but they were a definite mixed bag, and 1967 truly bit wind. 1968 was more a matter of digging my life out from under a pile of massive humiliation and getting on with the process of living. OK, it didn't start out that way; it was worse than that. When you end you New Year's Day by trying to walk into a spinning C-97 propeller, you're not exactly setting yourself up or a great year. The guys who tackled me, got me into the warehouse, screamed at me for being an idiot until I sobered up, and didn't report me to the Squadron Commander probable broke half a book's worth of regulations, but it worked out in the end. One of these days, when the one or two innocent parties are past being embarrassed, I'll tell you the details.

A lot of it depended on where you were, what you looked like, and how much money you had. Pretty much like today.....or last year.....or 1940.....or 1215. Greatest for whom? Best as compared to what?

It strikes me that the majority of people writing about the Sixties weren't there. Somewhere, I read that half the population of the world was born after the Beatles broke up. So why is it these people are qualified to pronounce on the merits of one year over another? There hasn't been enough history or context yet to justify the kind of "greatest" or "most important" portions of puffery that are currently filling up my mailbox and iGoogle windows.

At least give it enough time so that people stop throwing punches, actual, verbal, or virtual about the merits of military service or avoidance thereof during the Viet Nam era.

Or how about trying something new? Why is it that we can't start the year by accepting it on its own merits. For some of us, it has the possibility of being a year when things finally work out. For others, it's going to be a long, nasty slog through the gooey stuff in order to end up, 12 months hence, pretty much where we started. And then there are those who won't even want to talk about this year, once it's all over. A lot like 1968.