Is It Time for a “Re-Set?” Know the Signs!

Are you possibly a time whose idea hasn’t come?

By Ed Goldman

Not all that long ago, a “re-set” was something you did with your wristwatch or alarm clock. If you were selling your car, it might be something you did with its odometer to make it seem that in the 33 years you’d owned it you’d miraculously driven your car only 262 miles.

And if you were as corrupt as the example above, a “reset” might be something you pray the judge will do in reference to your bail.

Seems like old times

Lately, though, people are using the term “re-set” to mean erasing an especially embarrassing moment—like hosting a second dinner party because at the first one you got drunk and tried to organize a combined conga-and-spanking line in your driveway.

The term can mean to simply reconsider not only your actions but also your priorities. Here are 20 examples of times you might want to consider asking your personal God, life coach or parole officer for a re-set:

When you receive the online report about how much screen time you spent looking at your phone last week and it surpasses the total number of hours in that week. Or month.
When your doctor suggests breathing exercises to reduce stress and you realize that for you, breathing had long ago becomeexercise.

When someone says he or she used to have a suit just like yours then adds “until I got a job.”
When you join your pals and shave off your hair for a worthy-cause fundraising event but the event is canceled and only theirs grows back.
When you over-inject yourself with Botox and are thrown bread crumbs by elderly people in your local park. (Note: applying orange lipstick might not have been a good idea.)
When you ask your life partner if you should possibly lose some weight and the response is, “Well, duh.”
When you don’t recognize a single name in a celebrity birthdays column.
When you realize you not only haven’t seen but also never heard of this year’s Oscar nominees.

When you think of the musical-guest segments on “Saturday Night Live” as bathroom breaks.
When you TiVo any show beginning after 10 p.m., including breaking news, and watch it the next day in the afternoon, when that news is long broken.
When your daily calendar includes a 45-minute nap. Twice.
When you realize if your parents were still alive they’d be somewhere in their hundreds.
When you hear a date projected for when Social Security may run out of money and actually take comfort in knowing by then you’ll be dead.
When you find yourself wondering why Clint Eastwood doesn’t have any more “Dirty Harry” movies coming out, then Google him and discover he’s 94. And that at this point, the proper response to his iconic “Make my day” would be to offer him some soup.
When you remember that as a child, you told your parents that someday you’d be old enough to run for President of the United States. And now, even in your mid-70s you’re apparently still not old enough.

When you’ve read so much about how coffee, eggs, booze and butter will kill you that you’re thinking the time has finally come for you to give up reading.
When your pronoun-forward kid or grandkid tells you he’s fallen in love and wants to marry “them,” and you fear he’s fallen in with a dangerous polygamous cult and needs to be de-programmed.
When your disability policy is canceled by your insurance company because its actuarial figures indicate you can’t possibly still be working at your age.
When you figure out why retirement communities demand all of the cash upfront for your independent-living cottage.
When someone makes a nasty remark about you at a business meeting and everyone bursts into applause.

Ed Goldman's column appears almost every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. A former daily columnist for the Sacramento Business Journal, as well as monthly columnist for Sacramento Magazine and Comstock’s Business Magazine, he’s the author of five books, two plays and one musical (so far).