Can we convince ourselves that it's really a year?
by Jack Neely
I'm sure you've heard cranks insist that the 20th century doesn't end this month, that it actually ends a year from now. I understand the arguments. They'll make for a good enough excuse for more millennium parties one year from now.
But for most of us, including you computers, the most significant impending calendar change of our lives will come next week. The look and sound of the names we give our years will change with awful finality next Friday night.
The last time we had a year that didn't start with a 1, America was unnamed and unknown to most of the world. The English language didn't exist in any form we'd understand. Democracy was a forgotten dream of ancient Greece. If we were to suddenly land anywhere on the planet in 999, we wouldn't recognize anything except for wheels, architecture, and maybe some pictures of Jesus. Dogs and babies might seem strangely familiar. Then we'd be enslaved or slaughtered because, of course, we're strangers.
Civilization, as we know it, has always had that big 1 in front of it. It's been the dependable flagpole for the changing years, connected to every possible three-number combination for a thousand years.
We've seen the end coming. The millennium was already more than three-quarters over when James White cut logs to build a cabin and a mill on this unlikely hill near this unfriendly river. It was 86 percent spent when it dawned on us that it wasn't right to keep human beings like dogs. It was more than nine-tenths over when bicycle mechanics got a motorized aeroplane off the ground.
When we don't see that dependable 1 in front, when we don't hear the ring of that teen in there, will it seem like real time?
We've depended on that teen more than we realize. It has provided rhythm and percussion to history. Riding the bus to YMCA daycamp at Concord Park around 1964, the rowdier kids, most of whom got on the bus at Rocky Hill, taught me historical songs which help me in my research to this day. "Hen-a-ry the Eighth" was one of them. But my favorite daycamp bus song started out this way: "In eight-teen four-teen we took a little trip...." I wasn't even sure what war it was about, but I loved the song. It was my introduction to U.S. History. Defiantly I hollered it out the window at the cows of Concord, "Down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico!" I pictured the redcoats running through the bushes and running through the brambles where the rabbits couldn't go. Nowadays, of course, there aren't any places on Northshore where Volkswagen Rabbits couldn't go. Looking at the royal names of the neatly groomed subdivisions that have tamed those old cow pastures and bushes and brambles, it's obvious that in the 35 years since we brazen T-shirted patriots rode down Northshore defying the British, the British have taken over without a shot. I never even got to see the whites of their eyes.
Anyway, would I have enjoyed singing that song as much if it were about, say, 2006? Or 2011? The 2000s just won't have the rhythm and the ring of our home millennium.
I don't know how many people think of time this way, but I've always seen time in shades of light and dark. Going back to the Trojan War or thereabouts, different centuries and even decades have different shades. I think it helps me remember dates: a saving grace in school, because I could never remember much of anything else.
Even as a kid, I always thought of the balance of the 20th century, even the remote '90s, as dark and complex and stormy. But I always pictured the 2000s as a hard, flat, featureless plane composed of some white acrylic substance. When I saw the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, PanAm flights to the moon didn't seem either likely or unlikely to me. It was the year itself that seemed unlikely.
That's mere millennialist prejudice, of course. We'll get used to the number, or at least our kids will. The biggest change that comes with "the Year 2000" will likely be its effect on how near the future seems.
I remember the first time I considered the likelihood of actually being alive in the year 2000. I was a kid, probably humming that 1814 song when I snuck down to the basement just before midnight to watch Johnny Carson. I didn't care that much about his guests, none of whom I'd ever heard of. My favorite part was right at the beginning, just watching a couple of well-dressed 40-ish guys talk. When I understood their booze jokes and ex-wife jokes, I felt in.
Anyway, one night Johnny was just making small talk, as he always did, when he turned to Ed and said, "Do you realize it's possible that we might still be alive in the year 2000?" Johnny thrilled just to think about it. But hefty Ed seemed uncomfortable with the question, didn't squeeze out his usual hearty Hey-oh!. I think he just coughed.
I realized then that I might survive that long, too, and, like Johnny, looked forward to it, even if it meant I'd have to be close to their age. But I also know that next Friday night, we'll enter the century that will be the end of the line for us and nearly everyone we know. We might as well go ahead and carve 20s on our tombstones. I'm feeling a little like Ed today.
Call the number change arbitrary if you want to, but 2000 may carry with it psychological effects that will makes the Y2K bug seem like a tired housefly. Next week those dates 70 or 80 or 90 years after our births will seem suddenly much closer—maybe as close as they really are.
I don't know about you, but I may try to get a whole lot more done in the next decade than I did in this last one.
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