STRANGER THAN FICTION: ANOTHER YEAR, ANOTHER CHANCE TO GET IT RIGHT

Part of my high-pressure, mentally taxing job at the newspaper is to come up with one of the weekly man-on-the-street questions. You know -- the ones where a reporter runs up and asks how you feel about the Republican view of the energy crisis but you don't know what the heck he's talking about.

Thanks for making up answers anyway. We reporters will take any reply that gets us out of the cold.

My most recent man-on-the-street question was the creative, perennial favorite: What is your New Year's resolution?

Guess what. Some people don't make them anymore.

Yes, yes, I'm shocked, too. What's Jan. 1 without suffering? What's a new year without giving up something you love?

Every year since the dawn of time, my New Year's resolution has been to lose weight and quit cursing. No matter that I've been reduced to wearing Big Mama-brand pantyhose and have a mouth like a sailor -- hope springs eternal.

My cursing downfall began at a former job, where a co-worker had fine-tuned his cursing to an artistic level. He could work those four-letter words into phrases and sentences formerly undiscovered by humans.

Before I knew it, I was his protege.

The folks I'm around now are a lot more cultured, so I'm the official white trash who lives and works among them. Here, I keep things pretty much under control. Behind the wheel, it's a whole different story, much to The Other Half's disappointment.

"Did you see that blankety-blank?" I sometimes scream. "~That blank cut me off!"

"Sweetie, that's not very feminine," he says.

"Well, then, just go blankety-blank!" I reply.

You know, Alanis Morissette can say the "S" and "F" words and make millions, but I just get a lot of grief from my husband. Go figure.

My parents don't bear any of the blame for this problem at all. Mom never, ever cursed, not even if she hit her thumb with a hammer or burned herself on a pan. On the rare occasions she DID say a naughty word, she started with a disclaimer.

"I'm sorry to say it like this, girls, but what Joe did to Sally was a damn shame," she would say. "Excuse my French."

My stepfather was a different story. He cursed a little more, but the words he said were derivatives of actual curse words. Maybe it was just his Morehouse accent, but when someone told him a lie, his answer was, "That's boo-sheet." Get it?

Actually, things are improving already. I read somewhere that people who curse a lot aren't intelligent enough to express themselves using pure English. I saw that as a real drawback in my line of work and started thinking my sentences out a little better.

But come Jan. 1, I'll be curse-free, even if I hit my thumb with a hammer.

The other resolution, to lose weight, doesn't deserve much discussion. First, you're probably sick of it. Second, I'm sitting here snacking on low-fat shredded wheat squares, but let's not kid ourselves. I'll be eating a cheeseburger with everything by midnight.

The problem is a mental block. I own every book about weight loss ever written, and they all say the same thing. High fiber, low fat, no sugar. You know the routine.

Trouble is, for the bargain price of $2.99 plus tax, I can be eating a two-patty cheeseburger, a huge bucket of fries and a soda (diet, of course). Good salads cost a lot more, and try eating THEM in a five-speed!

Enough excuses, already. Come Jan. 1, I'll be munching on shredded wheat squares and carrot sticks day and night, if I have to.

But I can't promise anything for Jan. 2.

~Heidi Nieland is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.