NEWTON'S LAW: READY OR NOT, 1991 ARRIVES: WE ONLY WISH OURSELVES WELL

Nineteen-ninety is within hours of completing its calculated run, 365 days long, just as planned. As the last seconds tick away, they'll sing "Auld Aung Syne." They should change it to that song with the words "another year older and deeper in debt." More people would identify with it.

Just as the calendar is predictable, so are the media's musty attempts to use December's last days as an inventory of our existence over the previous 12 months. There is always the conceited effort made to sum up who we are by explaining what we did.

The guilty parties have stepped forward; I am among them.

Was it just a year ago we were ushering in the new decade? The 1990s were holding a lot of promise in those days, an optimism we afforded ourselves with a new time period to shape: forgive us the euphoria, but it was nice to think the '90s could represent a new golden age.

It's a common mistake. When we looked forward from late December 1969, we had no way of knowing the coming decade would bring us disco.

Before 1990 elapsed, the words "new world order" were being spoken and we were uncomfortable with the context. Last year, the Berlin Wall was crumbling and we were itching for some global harmony; Saddam Hussein, a man less familiar to us in 1989 than the goofball who torments his cousin Vern in all those commercials, broke the spell and threatened world peace.

We thought the annexation plans of Cape Girardeau and Jackson were as contentious as these actions got. Saddam made officials of those two communities look like pikers; he breezed into Kuwait City and claimed a sovereign nation, just like that. America sent its sons and daughters to make sure his gall didn't sprout new wings. We have requested he get a new attitude.

If we were "Saddamed" in the Middle East, we were "Ibened" closer to home. If you are a true believer, Dr. Browning proved his point: a 50-50 probability is a forecast something won't happen, too. Still, everybody was shaken over a quake that never came.

George Bush was the Iben Browning of domestic policy. The president instructed us at one time to read his lips and believe what we read; he should have given us a 50-50 probability on the new taxes thing.

President Bush supplemented his inverse ventriloquism with a sideshow of playful advisers: Dick Darman, whose economic theories involve our billfolds; John Sununu, a chest-thumping Chicken Little with a knack for souring the loyalty of GOP congressmen; Bill Bennett, a brash man known to never unpack his books in any office he occupies; and J. Danforth Quayle, the first vice president in history to collect fewer frequent flyer miles than his boss.

It was not a year without hope: Ryan White taught us about the pain of humanity and Donald Trump taught us about the joy of humility (when inflicted on rich folks). Both helped us know more about ourselves, if prompting us to doubt that the meek will inherit the Earth.

To lift and adjust a line from "Casablanca," 1990 was a year like all years, only more so. We can't say we're ready for whatever 1991 brings, but what choice to do we have but to try.

We can only wish ourselves well. I do so here.