I am a solitary creature. My circle of friends is a small one, an orbit of no more than six or so people, including myself. My wife and I live lives like people in the witness protection program. My days are filled lurking in my apartment, ordering take out food, and generally trying to stay off the radar. A lifestyle such as this is not one that lends itself to parties. Parties are scary. People that go to parties are scary.

I can understand the urge compelling many otherwise sane people to go out on the last night of the year, get loaded on drink specials and cheap champagne and yell HAPPY NEW YEAR around midnight. I can see how that sort of thing could be fun for some people. Liquor plus crowds often equal misadventure, and misadventure is fun. My problem is that many of the people who crowd around and drink liquor on New Years Eve don’t do that kind of math very often, and are therefore extremely dangerous.

Think about it. It’s the first weekend after the holidays. Stress levels are high. Families have been visited. Old ghosts confronted. Days have been spent trying to live up to other peoples expectations. Many people need to blow off some steam in a way that con only be facilitated by projectile vomiting. The streets become littered with the infrequently intoxicated, and the atmosphere in the world becomes a lot more unstable, like one great big sociological earthquake.

It is for this reason that I stay in every New Years Eve. I stock up on food like it’s World War Three, and lock myself in the house. It is much, much safer. I sit back, pig out on crappy food, and flip on Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve. I watch them drop the ball in another time zone, then wait around for them to do it again for my midnight. By the time its 12:00 in central every one in Times Square has gone home, but some channel plays the ball again, so I count again, toast again, kiss my wife again, then go to bed around 12:10. By the time I wake up things have calmed down significantly. Humanity may have chewed itself to pieces, but I am safe and sound and have three frozen pizzas in my refrigerator. I have not thrown up, caused any trouble, or been involved in any awkward scenes.

That is until this year.

This year I wish I had gone somewhere. Anywhere. I wish I had turned off my TV and rung in the New Year with a good book. Put a puzzle together. Anything but watch the nightmare that was television the night of December 31, 2005.

See, last year Dick Clark had a stroke and was unable to host the 2004 New Year’s rockin’ Eve. Regis Philbin filled in for him that night, and while extremely irritating, was good enough. He counted, the ball fell, I went to bed, and things were basically normal. All night Regis talked about Dick like things were basicly OK, like Dick Clark had had some type of Minor circulatory episode, but that by next year he would be back to talking about the temperature, and how many people were in times square, and how the city and the dedicated people in the sanitation department would have the whole thing cleaned up by morning. Regis was temporary, a second string Dick Clark, and soon he would be gone and everything would be back to normal. I believed that was true. Why would Regis lie, I asked myself? People have minor strokes all the time. The recovery is tough, but before long they are back to normal.

Then I forgot all about Dick Clark. He is like Jerry Lewis in a certain way. You only think about Jerry Lewis on Labor Day, and then only when you flip around and see the telethon. They were both very busy media figures at one time, but are now relegated mainly to their respective holidays. A year passed.

Last week I remembered the business about Dick Clark’s stroke. I saw an advertisement about the New Year’s show and somewhere towards its end was mentioned “The Return Of Dick Clark.” Oh good, I thought, Dick’s all better.

I was a little excited when it came time for the show to start. I like events, and I was in a really good mood. It had been a good year for me, and I was happy that Dick was feeling good enough to do the show, even if he was hosting with Ryan Seacrest.

Seacrest yammered away in that slick top forty DJ way of his for about the first hour. He ate a hotdog with a guy in a way reminiscent of the famous spaghetti scene in Lady and the Tramp. My wife and I made Jello Brand Flan. I had bought a bag of mixed nuts, complete with shells, for two dollars at the grocery store earlier that day on our provision run, but out of cheapness had neglected to buy a nutcracker, so I was trying to figure out how to open a walnut with a butter knife. It can, by the way, be done. The show broke for the local news, and when it came back Ryan Seacrest announced that in a few seconds America would witness the triumphant return of DICK CLARK, AMERICA’S OLDEST TEENAGER. All was right with the world.

Now I have to be honest; I don’t know how to react to what I saw next. With a little introduction Ryan Seacrest tossed the show over to Dick, who was seated smiling, one hand on the desk, the other by his side. He said this:

“Last year I had a stroke,” he explained on the air. “It left me in bad shape. I had to teach myself how to walk and talk again. It's been a long, hard fight. My speech is not perfect but I'm getting there.”

His speech wasn’t perfect. He was hard to understand. He looked thin and emaciated. He looked tired. His timing was off. He messed up the countdown, ringing in the new year a couple of seconds before midnight. It was very, very, hard to watch. I felt awkward. Mortal. It was a really strange time to be thrust face to face with human deterioration. The stroke had clearly been MUCH wore than Regis had led me to believe. It was a lot to take in all at once.

This is how, about 45 minutes before my midnight, I was forced to confront my mortality, the place of the disabled in the modern world, and my prejudices on the subject.

Should Dick have gone on? Was he manipulated for monetary gain? Is this a triumph for stroke victims everywhere, or was it simply the right idea at the wrong time? I don’t know. I really don’t. Maybe my reaction would have been better had I some idea as to the extent of Dick’s condition. If I had seen him, had his new state been broken to me slowly, maybe it wouldn’t have been so shocking. I’m not sure. I can see why Dick would want to do it, go out there, show everybody that he’s still got it, but does he? Again, I don’t know. On one hand I think it might be better if we had been allowed to remember old Dick, Dick the immortal. It wasn’t too long ago that people still made jokes about how young he still looked. On the other hand it’s probably valuable to see the truth. That no one, even the famous, can live forever. That aging is a part of life. That the strong grow weak, but that the weak are still valuable. But was New Year’s Eve the right time?

Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I am a silly sophomoric jerk, who is insensitive enough to have such a morbid gut reaction to a stroke victim. There is probably truth to that. It clearly brought a lot of issues out on to the table. Still, there is a lot to be said for timing. I just don’t know.

I know I couldn’t do it. I switched the channel about ten after eleven, and watched this thing about penguin babies on the discovery channel. I switched back during commercial, to see how he was doing, quickly dipping my toe in the water like a pussy, avoiding Regis altogether. When it came time to countdown on my time I did so with Carson Daily. It just wasn’t the same. As he dispassionately rambled down the seconds till midnight, I found myself missing the old Dick, mourning him while he was still on the air.