Most Memorable New Year’s Eve

Hands down, my most memorable New Year’s Eve was New Year’s Eve, 1995. Most of my New Year’s memories are pretty hazy, but this one stands out the most to me for many reasons. 1995 was the last year that I spent Christmas in the USA. I was lucky to have been able to get an extended vacation that year, mostly because my previous vacation had been canceled due to operational priority. In fact, in my military days, it was common place for vacations and such to be canceled because of sudden deployments to troubled areas of the world such as North Korea and the Persian Gulf, to name a couple. Anyway, on New Year’s Eve, 1995, I was on a flight returning to my homeport of Yokosuka, Japan. This flight was a commercial flight, and since it was an overseas flight, all of the alcoholic drinks were free. Also, since I was young, loved to drink and had nothing better to do with my time, I took full advantage of the free alcohol.

Every time that a flight attendant, or stewardess as they were called then, passed my seat, I would ask for some beer. Somewhere around the end of the “dinner” service, the flight attendants had gotten tired of bringing me drinks. Interestingly, instead of cutting me off, one flight attendant did something unexpected. The last time that I asked for a beer, of course at that time I didn’t know it would be the last time I would get to ask, the flight attendant told me to follow her to the rear kitchen. I then got out of my seat and followed her to the rear kitchen. When we arrived, she gestured to the 3 cabinets in front of us and said,  “This one has domestic and imported beer; this one is wine, and that one has the hard alcohol. Help yourself.” As soon as she said that, she walked away. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. She had just given me permission to be my own bartender! I was on cloud nine!

I would have never imagined in my entire life that anything like this could happen. It was almost too perfect, and on top of the self-service, I was sitting in the back row. It was the only time in my life that I was thankful to be in the very back of coach class. I did not go crazy with the alcohol or take extra for later. I only took what I was going to drink as I was drinking it. Everything was going great until they started serving champagne to celebrate New Year’s, just before breakfast. They ended up serving me two glasses of the stuff because they were a bit unorganized, but I wasn’t complaining. After that, I fell asleep until it was time to land.

Unfortunately, following that, my adventure of public transit on January 1^st started!

Kevin

Vocabulary

hands down (idiom) - easily or definitively; without a doubt

hazy (adj.) - vague or ill-defined

cut someone off (idiom) – to no longer allow someone to do something

hard alcohol (noun) - an alcoholic beverage that is distilled rather than fermented; drinks with a higher alcohol percentage

be on cloud nine (idiom) - very happy

coach class (noun phrase) - economy class (American English)