OPINION

There are things I know. Snakes, for instance, are not inherently bad. Not if you know the rules.

If a snake has a head like an arrow and your children are near, you beat that thing to death with a garden hoe.

Easy.

If your kids are not nearby, or if the snake does not have an arrowhead, you say sagely that snakes are a great benefit to mankind, and have been misunderstood since the apple.

Simple. But not.

In the event you spot a striped snake with a normal head, you must recite a poem to determine where you stand, or where you ought to be standing:

“Red and yellow kill a fellow,

Red and black, good for Jack.”

It’s a useful little verse, even as my wife grabs a hoe and yells “who the (CENSORED) is Jack?”

Because if red stripes touch black stripes this is clearly a harmless scarlet kingsnake that will probably keep rats and bubonic plague out of your life. If the yellow stripes separate the red and black stripes, it’s a coral snake, native only to the southernmost American climes, for now. It is an innocuous-looking little gem that will kill you, even if it has to gnaw its way through your boots to do it.

Red black yellow = safe. Red yellow black = death.

There are things I know. And there are things I don’t know. Like how to predict the future. But look out.

The year 2025, in the Chinese zodiac, is the Year of the Snake. Specifically the wood snake. I was told by someone who is neither Chinese nor a herpetologist to expect great things from snake years. I looked further, only to find in my dubious research that the “lucky” colors for the Year of the Snake are, in this order, red, light yellow, and black.

Reach for a hoe. These are the last nine snake years:

• 1917: It was the start of the Russian Revolution, the year the U.S. entered WWI, a war so horrible it killed 16.5 million people and was supposed to end wars.
• 1929: A year synonymous with doom. The stock market crash propelled the world into the Great Depression.
• 1941: The year that lives in infamy. Pearl Harbor, and the U.S. entry into WWII.

Should I go on? I mean those are some seriously snakey years. I must:

• 1953: The U.S. birthed the hydrogen bomb and Nikita Khrushchev began his climb to power.
• 1965: U.S. soldiers began to ship out to Vietnam. Malcolm X was assassinated, John Lewis and others were beaten to a pulp at the Selma to Montgomery march.
• 1977: Elvis died, Skynyrd crashed and I went to see my favorite band at the time, Boston. They bombed.
• 1989: I thought the worst thing to happen this year was the brutality at Tiananmen Square. But if you believe the History Channel it was also the year scientists invented that thing that would snake its way into our lives as the World Wide Web. I’d beat it with a hoe if I could.
• 2001: 9/11 changed everything.
• 2013: The Boston Marathon bombing. The death of Nelson Mandela (and Tony Soprano).

Yikes. How are we to look at all those snakes and figure out how to step forward? It helps to, well, know a few things.

Like how the horror of 1917 gave birth to Ella Fitzgerald and JFK and the NHL. It was a world that needed song, and courage, and hockey too. Definitely hockey.

Martin Luther King Jr. was born in the crash year of 1929. So were my dad and the car radio. I’d like to think they all made the world better.

In 1941 we got Citizen Kane, what a lot of people call the best movie ever made. Ted Williams hit .400 for the Red Sox, and nobody has done it since. Sure, Joe DiMaggio ran up a 56-game hitting streak. That’s some kind of year.

Scientists discovered DNA and developed the polio vaccine in 1953.

In 1965 Joe Namath went to the Jets, and my wife (who firmly believes snake years are the best) was born. So was Medicare, the Voting Rights Act and “My Girl” (it came out in December ‘64, but lived in ‘65).

SNL premiered in ‘77, and scientists fittingly discovered the rings of Uranus that year, too. Eighth-grade boys have been laughing ever since. Gameboy debuted in 1989, and American Gods in 2001. I’m pretty sure something good happened in 2013, too. If only you look.

I guess at the end of the day, or year, predictions don’t matter as much as intentions. So don’t fear a scary year. Just take it on like you would a snake.

You really don’t need to beat it to death with a garden tool. Just step aside, and head on down your path.

John Archibald is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize.