Yep, I'll boycott parties again

Just one day away.

I have never had good luck with holidays — two wonderful pets died a decade apart, each on Christmas Day — but New Year’s Eve has been particularly dreary.

More than a decade ago, I decided not to fight the trend — and so I’ve basically stayed indoors on the night of Dec. 31 (sometimes watching one of those terrible TV shows from Times Square, but just as often not) and gone to bed hoping no one would blow up the entire neighborhood.

You’re setting the bar pretty low when you’re only hoping to remain in one piece on the first morning of a new year.

Perhaps I’ve never gotten over the fact that I nearly died one New Year’s Eve — way, way back — when I had to drive up and over somebody’s lawn to avoid a drunk driver who would have hit me head-on.

At 6 o’clock in the evening.

THERE IS now, however, a complication to my plans for boycotting New Year’s Eve celebrations.

It turns out that my partner Melissa’s birthday is Dec. 31, so she’s generally up for a spectacular night on the town. So far, I’ve managed to avoid those evenings of madness with promises of even better (and more expensive) outings on other dates.

So far, she hasn’t called my bluff, but a reckoning could be coming at any moment.

I may have to spring for some extravagant dinner — perhaps even with a dance or two in the bargain — somewhere down the road, but despite her pleas it will not be on New Year’s Eve.

Heck, I thought the whole bout of mob insanity was nuts when I was a (considerably wilder) kid, so the chances that I’m going to wade out into a crowd of drunks as a slightly wiser adult are slim to none.

And yes, before you even ask, I have had a couple of enjoyable New Year’s Eve experiences — but only one in my lifetime involved a huge crowd of people.

THE BEST, in fact, consisted of maybe a dozen people.

On a plane.

I was a sports columnist at the time, and assigned to cover an NFL playoff game on the day of New Year’s Eve in Baltimore. When the event was over and I’d filed my story, I had to hustle to catch a red-eye to Dallas for yet another playoff game on Jan. 2.

It turned out there were only four or five passengers on that late flight to Texas, so the crew invited everyone aboard to move into the first couple rows of first class — where we partied with hats and streamers and all sorts of fun things.

We even had a countdown to midnight, a tricky assignment because the flight crossed two time zones. I think we ultimately celebrated the New Year somewhere over Kentucky.

As for my one great experience in a crowd, it came during the years I lived in Scotland. There is a spectacular yearly celebration in the center of Edinburgh — one of the world’s most enchanting cities — and I actually enjoyed being in that mob.

Maybe Scots are just happier drinkers, but it was a magic night.

And after all, you should sing Auld Lang Syne in the country of its origin just once in your life.

But once is enough, so I’ll be in bed early again — exchanging high-fives with my cat — on Saturday night.

Then let’s get on with 2017.

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Steve Cameron is a special assignment reporter for The Press. Reach Steve at [email protected].