Sober For The Second Time in My Life on New Years Eve
January 1st, 2009 by Ben Moreno
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It is now 4:13am and my kids are finally going to bed. I said, "What the hell!? It’s New Years. Let em stay up and play". Tonight I spent the entire new years evening sober and hanging out with my two kids. Most of the time was spent playing The Secret of Mana with my 6 year old daughter. It is really old but cool role playing game for Super Nintendo. I used an emulator to play it on my PC.
My son spent his time on the PC next to us playing various games and going to Nick Jr. He is getting the hang of the controls for first person shooter games already. This is not bad considering he is only 28 months. His favorite game is Left for Dead. I am not sure how this may affect his growth in the long run, but I am not that worried.
When my daughter was around 4 she used to love watching Nightmare on Elm Street. One day she watched one of the movies with her mom and she started to like it. She would even ask us to put it on to go to bed! At 4 years old! I know this may sound twisted, sick, or just plain wrong, but when I asked her about it she said, "Daddy, I know Freddie Krueger isn’t real. I am not scared." She has never had any nightmares either.
The First Time Sober on New Years
Well, enough with the unethical behavior. Let’s talk about the first time I was sober on New Years. The first time it happened was when I was in the Navy. I was struck with bad luck and my duty day just happened to fall on New Years Eve. When you are in the Navy and are stationed on a ship, there must be a minimum amount of people 24/7 watching over the ship. It is quite impressive to know that, from the day a U.S. Navy ship is christened, to the day it goes out of commission, there is always someone there on watch.
Duty days usually start in the morning and end 24 hours later when you turn over the watch to the on coming duty section. During that time you may be assigned a watch. A watch is anywhere from a 4 hour to 12 period of time where you perform specific duties (usually standing in one spot) for security purposes. I was lucky enough not to have a watch on that day so I at least got to spend the evening watching the ball drop on TV.
Two unlucky individuals were assigned watches during the late hours of that day. The first guy had a watch from 7:55pm to 11:55pm and the second guy had what we call, "the balls to 4" watch (11:55pm-3:55am). The first guy was able run downstairs at the last minute and watch the ball drop on TV with us but the second guy had to wake up early and watch it first then go on watch for 4 hours after that. I think I would rather have the first guys watch, because at least you can celebrate for the rest of the night and morning if you wanted to.
Both watches really suck, but are honorable duties. While everyone is out carelessly partying there is a small group of people sacrificing that time to watch over the country. This is of course the way it should be looked at.
On that note, I will finish by saying that I enjoyed not being drunk-out-of-my-mind this time around. Instead, I spent some quality time with my kids. I will also be feeling a lot better than a lot of people when I wake up on New Year’s Day. 
Happy New Years to everyone who reads this or will read it, and no matter what you did for this night I hope you had fun.
Tags: 2009, new years eve, sober
