I want to be bitter about the year 2008. I really do.

You don’t need a deep level of understanding to be upset by this year.

Among the obvious reasons:

• Oil trading at $147 per barrel broke my bank over the summer as I paid $4.40 for gas.

• Oil trading at $31 this month is just insulting with the economy so badly off. More people in the United States can afford gasoline, 1 in 10 of those to go to a job they no longer have.

• Nearly 2 million people in the United States have lost their jobs in the last 12 months. Another 3 million could lose their jobs in the next 12 months. And I’m not sure that takes into any account the vagaries of the auto industry.

• This is the worst recession since the Great Depression, we hear. At that point, 1 in 4 Americans was without a job. Imagine knowing twice as many people without a job, then hope with all your might that something turns around to keep that from happening.

Although the newspaper industry is burning at only a slightly slower rate compared to the automotive inferno, I am a lucky one to have a job (so much for being bitter). But some of the ironies that exist among people I know are unbelievable. They draw sarcasm like blood.

One example belongs to my best friend, a security guard who lives in Detroit. Seven months ago he was unemployed and had a place to live. He’s now homeless, living with an acquaintance whose home is also being foreclosed upon. He’s got until February to find the next place to land. Some of you may recognize his name, Damien, from a column I wrote about him three years ago after he landed a job at a mortgage broker.

Say no more. I called him at 5:30 one morning as he was coming off his shift. The quotes are all his.

“Everybody, I guess, is just now coming to the realization that now is the only time you have because tomorrow you won’t have a house, tomorrow you won’t have a job. I’ve been (in that) for so long that’s just kind of the state of mind that I live in.”

Which is better than living in his car. He has managed to get into a newer vehicle, likely at the expense of affording a home.

“Most of the world is swimming around the toilet bowl coming to the realization that if you don’t do something now, there might not be a tomorrow.”

Don’t ask him about the automakers, by the way.

“Picture Detroit in earlier times. If you visit Detroit now it’s very apparent for the individual the car thing is a scam. It doesn’t have anything to do with the livelihood with the economics of the actual city. It does all those things for the suburbs. People come from the suburbs to make those cars. The city itself has been marching downward for 40 years. But now we have an untold amount of individuals who were never supposed to be experiencing total shutdown and that’s affecting the suburbs.”

Damien has the potential to be bitter enough for three people. Before working in security, he worked for a few mortgage companies in Detroit. That could explain a lot.

“Six years of my life was spent in mortgages. Couple years of my life spent in trade, all of which are now industries that are totally in the crapper. I am rapidly losing my visions of tomorrow, and I don’t remember the last time I had one.”

I want to be bitter at 2008. My job and my family keep me honest and happy. But what scares me the most is that 2009 will most likely be worse measured all sorts of ways.

Oh, and one more thing. I’ve shared at least once over the years a comment from my grandfather — a former bank manager, bookstore owner and Rotarian — that what this country needs is another “good Depression” to set it back to right. I could never have started to understand the implications of that until now.

-- Peter Comings is the editor of the Gaylord Herald Times. You can write to him at PO Box 598, Gaylord, MI 49734 or e-mail peter@gaylordheraldtimes.com.

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