New Years Eve - Times Square (Part IV)

11:30 - Dancing dissolves as we grow tired and excited by the proximity of 2010. Still, there's half an hour left to wait, so our group unexpectedly find ourselves in one last, short, game of kick-the-can. The crowd has definitely filled back in, so our circle is much smaller this time around, and every time the can gets kicked out of the ring there is some doubt about whether we'll get it back again. At one point a can of pringles gets knocked into our circle... we kick it around until suddenly it pops open spraying little pringle shards everywhere, like confetti. A young couple joins our game towards the end, saying they're from Minneapolis, although they have some sort of foreign accent... and our group grows once more.

Photo: Allan and "the Young Couple" playing Kick-the-Can

Photo: Pringles Confetti

11:55 - Kick-the-can disbands once more, this time for good. The time for games has passed. The mood in the square suddenly becomes almost suffocating. Our group, which has grown to include not only Kelly, Amy, Allan and I, but also Adrienne and Michelle, the three Maryland boys, their mother, the little Canadian girls, and even the young couple, huddles close together in anticipation.

11:59 - Allan is on one side of me, Adrienne is on the other as the final countdown begins. I grab both of their hands and everyone starts counting down together, jumping up and down for the perhaps the last twenty seconds...

12:00 - The square explodes with light - fireworks, confetti... "Happy New Year 2010" on the countdown screen. In all the confusion we don't even physically see the ball-drop, but that's okay, I figure - I can mentally reconstruct it from more than 15 years of T.V. coverage. Everyone screams, then hugs each other happily. Happy New Year!!!

Photo: My Best, Crappy Picture of the New Year. Figured it had to be included...

12:02 - Just like that, it's over. We trade Facebook info with some of our new friends, and get pictures together as the square starts emptying with surprising rapidity. The Canadian girl's go to say goodbye to Allan, who picks them up and spins them around. Their mother, a bit drunk, starts shrieking, "Get a picture with him! Get a picture with him!" So they do. For probably a full two minutes on end, the girls keep running back to Allan and saying, "Happy New Year!" again. I think they would have gone on for an hour if their mother had let them.

Photo: Allan and the Canadians

Photo: "The Young Couple" and Me

12:05 - Finally it is just our original group and the two German au-pairs left. We are all headed towards Port Authority, the bus station, so they say, "We'll just follow you", and the six of us start trying to make our way through the crowd.

12:15 - We reach the center of Times Square itself, where there is a genuine deadlock of people. For a few minutes no one can move at all - we are pressed in on all sides. It's not quite scary - we can breathe - but really not much else.

12:30 - We finally reach Port Authority, bid farewell to the Germans, and Allan and I head off to the bathroom while Amy and Kelly play it cool and head straight to the bus.

12:35 - Allan and I get to the bus stop and meet them just in time to make the bus that leaves a full hour before the one we'd originally planned to make. Go us.

03:00 - We finally make it back home and into bed. Guess who comes perilously close to needing her adult diaper, after all the bravado? That's right, Kelly. :D

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Wrap Up - From going out the door to coming back in, this was a full 12 hour experience. It was exhausting and physically demanding. However, it was also awesome and completely worth it. Kelly and Amy both agreed that they would do it again.

I, on the other hand, would probably not. Why? Judging from other people's accounts, and from several serendipitous occurrences (the emptying of the pen, the first kick-the-can game), I think I had a very atypical experience. The typical experience of standing and waiting in long hours of cold, concentrated misery? That's definitely a once-in-a-lifetime trial, but even the way it worked out for us was exciting, wonderful and most of all unique. I wouldn't trade it for anything, but neither would I jeopardize the memory by attempting to repeat it.

Thanks to everyone we met that night for making it a night I'll remember forever! <3