Can 2000 really be 10 years ago?! I remember being a kid and calculating how old I would be in (loud kid voice) the year 2000! — an unfathomable number of years away. And let me tell you, for a math-challenged person like me, that took some serious timesin’ and gazinta-in’. I couldn’t imagine being 3o(mumblemumble)! (And I always calculated wrong, forgetting that I wouldn’t actually turn 30(mumblemumble) until October of 2000.)
And now here we are, 10 years older later…
My favorite memory of that mad “Oh my God is the entire electronic world going to stop?” panic relates to someone I knew who worked in IT at the corporate headquarters of a clothing chain. You know, the kind of store that sells clothes to teeny-boppers?
Everyone in the IT department, after having labored all year to fix whatever computer systems might be confused by turning over to 00, was on call that New Year’s Eve. If havoc should reign, they were going to get a call (I think they had recently been issued beepers!) to come into work and restore order. And they were instructed, in all seriousness, that if the police would have roadblocks up (given the reigning havoc), they were to tell the police that they had a critical job and HAD to get to their place of business.
So we imagined how that conversation might go:
Hello, officer. I really must get through this roadblock. It’s critical.
No, I’m not a first responder.
No, I don’t work for the gas company or water company or electric company.
No, I’m not a medical professional.
No I don’t have the secret code that un-launches the missiles.
But really, officer, I HAVE to get to work….we have JEANS to sell!”
Ahhh, retail.
I also remember buying an extra tank of propane in case we had no power and couldn’t use the stove — at least we could grill up some chicken and have a party!
But no, no calamities happened. I rang in the New Millennium with dear friends and Dick Clark, like many, many other New Year’s Eves — just as I will do tonight (minus Dick, I think).
Now the “oughts” will be over, just when it finally started to sound normal to hear the year referred to as “oh-something,” and we’ll be into the tweens. I’m more of an even-year person anyway, so I’m looking forward to good things in 2010. And maybe to partying like it’s 1999 all over again…only without the anxiety and extra propane.
Happy New Year to you and yours, and thanks for stopping by my little blog. (And thanks to God and Mother Nature for the gorgeous snow we woke up to this morning.)
A happy New Year! Grant that I
May bring no tear to any eye
When this New Year in time shall end
Let it be said I’ve played the friend,
Have lived and loved and labored here,
And made of it a happy year.
~ Edgar Guest
Writing by Ear 