New Year’s Eve in the late 1950s, when you were too young to look back and not old enough to look forward, but you remember those magical nights when you could stay up till midnight in New York City. When you and your sisters and brother were given pan lids to bang together like cymbals as you leaned out your ninth story window protected by curved window guards. You didn’t need special hats or blowers, just a couple of ordinary kitchen pan lids you will bang and clang together as if to say, Hello world! I’m here! I exist!

In the teeming, grownup city that pays you no mind, living above neighbors who complain about four pairs of little feet pounding bare floorboards as they run about the house, this one night of the year it’s permissible to make a racket.

You keep awake till midnight by watching The Twilight Zone as you devour wedges of Drakes Frosted Coffee Cake, washed down with (normally) forbidden cokes. Then at last it’s time. Everyone grabs their pan lids. The windows are thrown open. Cold winter air rushes in and nobody cares. You charge over to the window. The blaring cacophony begins. Bang-bang! Clang-clang!

Time’s up, and you are shooed off to bed. But you don’t mind. You have said your piece and done your bit, and you’re sleepy anyway. So off you go on this cold black night, knowing that although you are little, you have made a big noise.

Happy New Year!