In a move of uncharacteristic generosity, I will continue my New Year’s tradition of offering resolutions for specific parts of the world’s population.

1. You will not stomp on your car’s brakes, dash across 3 lanes of traffic, screech into the Rita’s Water Ice parking lot only smack yourself on the forehead while remembering that it’s December and the only water ice places that are open are in the southern hemisphere. Your penance for not adhering to this resolution: when you really do need a water ice in July, the only flavor available for you will be jalapeno Tabasco.

2. Do not act surprised and surly when passengers are crabby as a result of the separation of approximately 80 gazillion pieces of luggage from their owners, there are suggestions that your airline may go out of business in mid-January rendering all hard-earned passenger miles worthless, and service has deteriorated to a growl and a snarl. Your penance for not adhering to this resolution: permanent assignment to the Vladivostock Aeroflot office.

3. Do not, as the billing clerk at my dermatologist’s office, scream at me that my insurance plan is indeed an HMO when it is not. Your penance for not adhering to this resolution: A flesh wasting disease that can only be cured by wearing a thick layer of garlic goose grease at all time.

4. Do not send me on the following wild medical goose chase in search of permission to have an MRI done:
a. Receive form from doctor indicating that I need a closed MRI of my cervical spine
b. Call one of the MRI offices that allegedly offers closed MRIs (apparently there are some that only do the open kind, which do not provide good images of the upper spine). Find out that they need permission from my insurance company to do the MRI. (Naively believe this to be true).
c. Call the insurance company. Wait on hold while seasons change and cities crumble. Be informed that they do not provide such permission, but one of their subcontractors (?) does.
d. Call the subcontractor. Wait on hold for only a few less seasons. Be informed that they will only provide said permission directly to the doctor’s office and not to the patient. Be further informed that I cannot call back in a few minutes pretending to be the doctor’s office because they will ask me for the secret code I do not possess.
e. Call the doctor’s office and tell them about steps b-d above. They promise to call the subcontractor and call me back the same day.
f. Time passes (days, to be precise).
g. Call the doctor’s office and discover that the subcontractor has told them that permission is not required for an MRI.
h. Go back to step b, and when they tell me that I need a permission slip, tell them that I don’t and that neither my insurance company, their subcontractor, the state department of transportation, the liquor control board, the airlines that are rapidly going out of business, nor the entire staff of Disney World can provide such permission. Wait during silence while MRI scheduling clerk riffles through a few papers until she perkily admits, “Yes, that appears to the case. Now let’s get you scheduled.”
i. Your penance for not adhering to this resolution: consignment to the 7th circle of Hell, also known as the US medical insurance system.