Quincy resident shares New Year’s resolutions from 1991
The following was submitted by Phyllis Golla of Quincy. Back in 1991, the following question was asked of the residents of the CareWest nursing home: What do you think about New Year’s Resolutions? Following are their candid responses; Golla thought it would be interesting for our readers.
– Never believed in them. It seemed like a pastime. They weren’t always honest — just a bunch of baloney!
– They are wonderful if you are able to live up to them! I’d like to be feeling well again in 1992.
– I agree, it’s baloney! Sad but true. Good for some people to make them — they do everything else.
– I don’t remember ever making any. It’s been a long time ago.
– I made a lot of them, but I didn’t pay attention to them — I might as well tell the truth.
– We made them last year. We wrote them on toilet paper with a red pen, rolled them up and stuck a popsicle stick in them like a scroll. For the next year, I resolve to get into mischief, not to give up the ship, not to go into Larry’s office and tell him off. Not to get pregnant.
– I don’t think resolutions are good to make because it is hard for an honest person to stay on the straight and narrow these days.
– Resolutions are just to vow one will do better than what they did last year.
– When I was younger, my friends and I would make them. They are hard to keep because you get busy and forget. One year, several lady friends made resolutions to have a date with Elvis Presley.
– I said to myself to just do the best that I could.
– I vowed to be decent and polite to everyone.
– My resolution was always the same — to keep the family together and I did.
– People always fail keeping them. I want to keep all my bills paid on time.
– It’s sharing with others a verbal agreement because people forget and they need a lot of encouragement and support to keep them.
– It’s a promise to do better next year — I confess I didn’t make any.
One resident shared this memory:
– There were about six of us who got together to celebrate the new year. We decided to share in the Italian custom of eating black-eyed peas and gnocchi. Tradition has it that this will bring good luck in the coming year.
Well, soon after I attended a golf tournament. Somehow, I slipped, broke an ankle and was in a cast for weeks. Shortly, after that, one night in bed, it became hard to breathe. An ambulance was called to take me to the hospital. My breathing became increasingly difficult.
The EMTs put me on a stretcher. Would you believe the darn doors in my house were just a little too small for the stretcher to fit? It took them extra time and skill to get me to the ambulance. At the hospital, it was discovered I had suffered a blood clot in my lung.
Now this all happened in 1972. I made a resolution to never have black-eyed peas and gnocchi on New Year’s again and this is one resolution I have kept and will always keep.
