It’s coming this week, that time when we make resolutions to have a better year than last year. Think about it. We just had the best Christmas ever, at least that’s what the song told us to do, and now we need to make 2026 better than 2025.

Next year, we’ll have the best Christmas ever again and make resolutions to have even a better 2027. Get the picture? At this senior stage of my life, my best days are ahead of me!

Well, then, let’s get on with some important resolutions so that I can be giggling with joy until the day I open the ground floor door and make the cemetery my new residence.

Let me begin with my refrigerator. I resolve to finally remove the mystery leftovers that have been in the back of the top shelf right since who knows when. They’re right next to the box of night crawlers I used last August.

Now onto my couch and this is important advice for everyone: I resolve to move my rear end to the right side of couch because sitting on the left has left an imprint in the cushion. I put this moving plan through a test the other day and it felt weird, as if I was sitting in a different home.

You know we senior citizens don’t like change, but it’s either I make the big move or risk leaving a permanent impression of my backside that will try to remind me to stay off the late-night chocolate chip cookies.

I resolve to pass by the box of Entenmann’s doughnuts in the grocery store. The five bucks I save I could use to buy a box of cereal or a few containers of yogurt to have for breakfast. I can imagine that I’m eating a double chocolate glazed doughnut while I spoon some yummy yogurt into my mouth. On second thought, I’ll buy the doughnuts, but only when they’re on sale.

I resolve to never watch one of those revenge movies again. You know, where the good guy’s family or dog are murdered and the rest of the film is about the guy searching for the killers and then he finds them and kills them all in vicious assassinations.

I remember watching a movie from the ’70s called “Walking Tall” in which a man (Joe Don Baker) gets revenge for the death of his family by killing the bad guys with what looked like a baseball bat. At the end, everyone in the theater stood up and applauded. We all might want to avenge someone. Bad karma often does the dirty deed for us.

Besides, in these movies, the hero returns to a peaceful life after the carnage he caused. If I pulled a Joe Don Baker with a baseball bat, nobody would be giving me a standing ovation in my prison cell.

I resolve to sleep less this year. Do the math. If we sleep eight hours each day and we live to be 75 years old, one third or 25 years of our lives would be spent rehearsing for what death will be like. On the gravestone for a 75-year-old man, his age at death should read 50. I know my logic here sounds stupid and maybe it is. Anyway, my trips to the bathroom in the middle of the night are enough reasons to make me sleep less, so yeah, it’s a stupid idea. I’ll keep my late morning naps, too.

I resolve not to get upset when I’m driving and someone cuts me off. I find myself yelling at the person, who obviously can’t hear me. I think car manufacturers should put intercoms inside the dashboards so that if somebody nearly drives me into a tree, I can scream right through his car and into his ear. Now, wouldn’t that be fun? Let’s have unlimited access. Imagine the salty language we could all hear from vehicle to vehicle while we’re driving 80 mph down the Pennsylvania Turnpike!

I resolve to talk less. My girlfriend likes this one, especially when I come to her house after chugging a Five Hour Energy Drink. I invade her quiet home with my blah, blah, blah about whatever my day was like. I think she bought herself a pair of earplugs for Christmas, but she didn’t tell me yet.

I resolve not to stare across a restaurant table where a mother, father, son and daughter have their eyes locked onto their cellphones. The only time they appear to speak is not to each other, but to order their food and then right back to their phones they go. While eating, the parents say nothing and the kids move their eyes back and forth from their plates to their phones. The next time I see this scene, I’m going to bolt over to their table, grab all their phones, and shout: “Life is too short to be wasting it staring at screens. Talk to each other, will ya!”

I resolve to stop talking out loud to myself. This is a hard one. I find that I really enjoy having conversations with me. I’ll have to look at it this way. I’ll always be my own best friend for the rest of my life. So, if you see me sitting on a park bench talking to no one, there will be two of me there. Pay no attention to the invisible man.

Finally, I resolve not to remember these resolutions and instead, follow the words of Canadian painter Farquhar McGillivray Knowles.

“He who breaks a resolution is a weakling; he who makes one is a fool.”

Happy New Year, everyone!

Email Rich Strack at richiesadie11@gmail.com