It's about that time of year to reflect or look ahead, and it is time to make my list of random Whys, Whens and What-ifs.
* Why do New Year's Eve parties seem sillier as the years go on?
* Why do I sometimes feel I am taking my life in my hands when I am looking for my car in a large shopping center parking area?
* Why do I feel I may have a head-on car crash when I am trying find a parking space in a two-way indoor parking garage?
* Why do men think they drive better in snow than women?
* Why do parents send their children to school with running noses and fever?
* What if we wore masks in bad weather like the Japanese.
* Why don't major department stores put on extra help after the holiday for the return gifts?
* Why did Clinton let Newt (The Grinch) steal Christmas from the Democrats?
* When will the two parties quit their one-upmanship? Before the next election?
* Why doesn't some honest young politician start a Centrist Party, anyway?
* Why is "honest politician" an oxymoron?
* Why am I the only person in the world who doesn't think the barking comedian, Tim Allen, is funny?
* Why do television networks keep putting the same comedians -- Hal Linden, Ed Asner, Dabney Coleman and Bob Newhart -- in those sit-coms? And surely Bob Hope could stay home with his great-grand kids.
* How many books-in-progress are there on the O.J Simpson case?
* Why does it take lawyers 10 paragraphs to say what other people can say in one?
* Why does Hollywood have to show us a male victim of sexual harassment in its very first depiction of sexual harassment, as in jTC the current movie "Disclosure?"
* Why don't Cokie Roberts and Sam Donaldson get new hairdos?
* What if we put rubber bumpers on shopping carts?
* Why don't restaurants give us a glass of water when we sit down?
* Why can't more theaters have crying rooms for the kids?
* Why are people who talk about computers and people who talk about searching their genealogy so boring at parties? Why don't they find one another at parties?
* Why do medical labs take so long to get the results of your lab tests to the doctor?
* What if we were able to test a new appliance at home when we buy one, like we try out a new car?
* What if airlines with their fancy computer systems called us at home when our flights are canceled like they used to do?
* Why can't hardware stores be open 24 hours?
* Why can't surgeons make eye contact with their patients?
* What if Sally Jessy Raphael, Jenny Jones, Geraldo, Donahue, Oprah and Povich -- any of those talking heads -- interview the Carmelite nuns or the Trappist monks? (What a relief it would be to us -- those orders don't talk.)
* When will American department stores get playrooms for kids like the Swedish-owned IKEA?
* Why is it that there is always just one forgotten shoe on a sidewalk or highway?
* Why don't teen-agers smile? Didn't they used to?
L * What if the Power Rangers take over America? Or have they?