Free Three Scoops is a Blast! by Alex Carrick Page A

remembrances of sunny skies past and nostalgic warmth that can never be repeated. The anthem for this instance is Auld Lange Syne and life centres on thoughts of old acquaintances. In newspapers and on television, respects are paid to celebrities whose glow has been extinguished over the past year. Of course I’m speaking of New Year’s Eve.
     
    Around the globe, at the midnight hour on December 31 and consecutively in each of 24 zones, there is a tear in the fabric of time. That is the moment when the reach-out-and-touch world undergoes a seismic shift to open portals for the incorporeal phantasmagorical world. It serves up moments when the everyday world is pre-occupied with seasonal parties. And the nights are at their longest. This is when the great sorting of souls now takes place. It is most convenient for the bureaucrats of heaven and hell – minions, functionaries and marshalling agents alike.
     
    Norman had already been informed of the staging area to which he was supposed to report. His essence had been marking time since a fiery car crash six months earlier. Needing the money and anxious to perform at his best, he’d been rushing to a singles-bar gig some twenty kilometres away from home on a Friday evening. A heavy rain was falling. Norman’s concentration wavered and he lost control of his car on the Toronto expressway. It swerved from the middle lane to the outside lane, clipping the guard rail. Then the Impala rebounded back across the whole expanse of asphalt and slammed rear-end-first into an abutment on the edge of an off ramp.
     
    The car exploded. The hood, glass from the windshield, engine parts and a tire flew into the air. It was a miracle no other drivers were seriously injured. Several witnesses knew they had escaped with their lives by the narrowest of margins. As for Norman, death was instantaneous. He was buried four days later in Cul de Sac Cemetery after a customary period of respect was paid by family and friends. The casket lid remained firmly closed throughout.
     
    Many times over the intervening months, Norman went back over his life to weigh the pros and cons of his individual actions. Had he been a good person or had he crossed over the line too many times? It was the “on balance” part of the equation that worried him. Through his night-time interactions with others in the spirit world, Norman learned how the system worked. Judgement-Day tests were no longer left to chance. A proper sizing-up was now done according to a scientific set of criteria. There was a check list. Certain items on the left side of a ledger would bring approbation. Other items on the right side would earn accolades.
     
    Most souls spent their remaining time on earth before New Year’s Eve fretting over the lists. That was all very well, but there were still two problems. First, there remained a good deal of subjective judgement on the part of adjudicators as to whether or not a certain action was positive or negative not only for the specific individual but also in terms of repercussions for the populace at large. Second, and even trickier to assess, was how much weighting would be given to each course of action. No formerly-human spirit had access to that information.
     
    Norman looked at the lists. Some of the items were obvious. Murderers, robbers and philanderers were going to be in trouble. Caregivers, benefactors and the charitable already had a step up, as it were. But a number of the other categories were a surprise. For example, emotional button-pushers had a separate and prominent box on the negative side of the ledger. However, this was immediately followed by another box for those who allowed their buttons to be pushed , either in terms of getting mad or becoming despondent too easily under criticism.
     
    Jealousy, greed and covetousness also figured strongly on the downside and frankly, the list of bad things one could be accused of vastly outnumbered the good things. “Hard working”