New Year's Eve · A friend · Funny · about a minute
Funny New Year's Toast About Last Year's Resolutions
Last New Year's Eve, a group of friends wrote their resolutions on a diner kids' menu. One of them kept it in his wallet all year and read it back at this year's party.
Given by Teague, who kept the kids' menu. 143 words. The names are made up.
The toast
Last New Year's, the diner gave us kids' menus by mistake, so we wrote our resolutions in crayon on the back, next to the maze. I've kept it in my wallet all year. I have it right here.
Let's see how we did.
Royce wrote "run a 5K without stopping." Royce ran a 5K in April. He also stopped, for a good chunk of it, to walk with a retired mail carrier named Dot, who is now his Saturday running partner. That counts.
Darla wrote "learn to juggle." Darla can now juggle two oranges, which she has shown me eleven times, once in a grocery store.
Mine says "read more." I've read this menu a lot.
Nobody did exactly what they wrote, and every one of you did something better. Glasses up. To the menu, and to whatever we write on it next.
Why it works: The kids' menu is a funny object to pull out of a wallet, and reading from it gives the toast a built-in structure. Every resolution missed, but each friend gets credit for something better that happened instead, and the speaker saves the weakest result for himself.
Make it yours
Borrow the shape, not the lines. Put your own people, your own year and your own detail in each spot, or answer a few questions and get a first draft built from them.