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MON BLOG- Greg's Magazine Column- Y2K + 9 = ? |
My January magazine column, published in South Florida.
Y2K+9= ?
It was minutes before midnight on 12/31/99.
I was standing on the quaint boulevard piercing downtown Anderson, Indiana wondering how the heck I ended up on a quaint boulevard piercing downtown Anderson, Indiana and given that, where might I find myself at the end of 2009?
Alabama? ROTFLM- oh….
Y2K. We were all freaking out, holding our breath and waiting for planes to fall out of the sky as their computer brains shut off at the stroke of midnight on 1999’s final day. Some “experts” were predicting such disasters.
Others, inspired by Biblical interpretations of straight arrows like Jimmy Swaggart, raised their arms at midnight awaiting the Rapture. These are the same people who will not Christmas shop in 2012 because John Cusack and the Mayans made a movie claiming the world will end 4 days before Christmas that year.
Why bother? Black Friday will be really slow in 2012.
The Y2K Incident, as it is remembered, became yet another example of man’s fundamental need to know when the world is going to end. When they’re not chasing monsters, UFOs or peering into pawn shops, almost everything on History Channel is about Doomsday
It is not a new phenomenon. In the late 19th century, a preacher (using the Bible) convinced tens of thousands of people to follow him to the top of a New England mountaintop because he’d calculated the exact moment of the world’s end. Follow him they did!
Most of them left wearing “I followed this nut to the top of a mountain for the End of the World and all I got was this lousy T-shirt” t-shirts.
Y2K became a popular topic of conversation in mid-1999. Friends and co-workers explained how the changing of the “1” to a “2” would wreak havoc across America, causing electrical grids to shut down, water to stop flowing and disabling the rides at Chuck E. Cheese.
I can honestly say I never bought in to any of the hysteria. I had a hard time believing the great minds that modernized our computer-driven world would get all the way to the middle of 1999, suddenly realize the next year would begin with a “2” and be totally helpless in making the necessary adjustments.
What I remember most about 2000 was the challenge of wrapping my mind around the fact that it was actually here.
2000 was such an impressive sounding number. Think about it. What would you rather have someone give you- 19-99 or Two Thousand?
There were issues to be settled, like how to pronounce the year. A few die-hards continue to call new cars the “twenty-oh-nine” but they are few and far between.
When I was a dopey little kid I once figured out I’d be 47 years old when 2000 arrived and tried to imagine what I would look like that old (never dreaming it would work out SO WELL!).
In the 60s, a LIFE magazine story predicted that by the turn of the century, our roads would all be automated. We’d simply punch in our destination and the car would find its way hitched to a device in the road that would propel the vehicle. By 1990, we’d live in an accident-free society!
Well, we have GPS- the automated back seat driver that nags you through every turn, but the rubber still meets the road- and we still meet the nicest people by accident.
Yet another story predicted we would travel through giant tubes that would intersect through the earth- using gravity to send us to China in a matter of minutes! We didn’t achieve that technology either, though I remain impressed every time the plastic container at the bank drive through travels in a similar matter. (How do the containers make turns in those pneumatic tubes?).
All I need now is a device that reminds me to put the container back in the drive through machine after I have removed the deposit slip. I’ve taken a few of those home, only to be called by an annoyed bank rep later in the day asking for its return.
At the dawn of a new decade I will once again pause and reflect, minus the wondering how I ended up where I am. The last 10 years were amazing There’s no reason why the next 10 won’t be equally amazing, if not more. I see that as my biggest accomplishment of the decade just ended- I now expect the best for myself and not the worst.
Who knows? I could actually find myself in a fully functional, happy relationship! Well, let’s not get carried away.
The world did not end 10 years ago and in spite of world leaders’ ongoing attempts to make it seem imminent, it ain’t going to end in 2012. Or 2019.
This particular column however, must end. Normally I put great effort into a finish that will leave the reader surprised, satisfied or feeling like they read a story that had a powerful beginning, a juicy middle and a powerful ending.
No problem!
Given my limited mathematical skills, it’s no less than a miracle I have come up with the answer to the equation posed in the title of this piece.
Y2K + 9 = ?
Why the Y2Canine, of course- and here he is!
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