Monday, January 04, 2010
New Decade... Same as the Old Decade
In some ways, it doesn't seem like it can possibly have been ten years since Y2K caused all computers worldwide to melt down and delete everyone's bank accounts/fire nuclear missiles at Topeka, Kansas. I mean, I can still remember the crazy millennium party I threw in my parents' basement, where we played board games and drank Boone's Farm Wine Product. I took some solace that if things we're going to shit at midnight, they'd be going to shit halfway around the world first. Who needs Europe, anyway?
But in other ways it seems like it's been much longer than ten years. I mean, for God's sake, I graduated from two different schools and held about six different jobs during that period. When the '00s started I was just a jerk college kid trying to make it through Sir Gawain and the Green Knight without drifting off. Then I was a jerk law student trying to write a paper about horizontal restraints of trade without sawing my arms off in boredom. I was a really lovely person then; I wish you had known me.
As a completely-grown-up 31-year-old, though, I feel pretty far removed from all that. I have a job that isn't working for one of my parent's friends and a life suffocating mortgage. I have traded my '95 Neon with no working radio or air conditioning for a bitchin' Corolla. I have to fix my own sink when I accidentally break the cold water dial off. Or drive myself to the emergency room after getting third degree burns as a result of not doing so, whichever.
I can't wait to read this again in another ten years and laugh at my youthful naivete. Assuming that reading and laughter still exist in another decade, that is. I'm hoping they're going to be replaced with hovercars.
In some ways, it doesn't seem like it can possibly have been ten years since Y2K caused all computers worldwide to melt down and delete everyone's bank accounts/fire nuclear missiles at Topeka, Kansas. I mean, I can still remember the crazy millennium party I threw in my parents' basement, where we played board games and drank Boone's Farm Wine Product. I took some solace that if things we're going to shit at midnight, they'd be going to shit halfway around the world first. Who needs Europe, anyway?
But in other ways it seems like it's been much longer than ten years. I mean, for God's sake, I graduated from two different schools and held about six different jobs during that period. When the '00s started I was just a jerk college kid trying to make it through Sir Gawain and the Green Knight without drifting off. Then I was a jerk law student trying to write a paper about horizontal restraints of trade without sawing my arms off in boredom. I was a really lovely person then; I wish you had known me.
As a completely-grown-up 31-year-old, though, I feel pretty far removed from all that. I have a job that isn't working for one of my parent's friends and a life suffocating mortgage. I have traded my '95 Neon with no working radio or air conditioning for a bitchin' Corolla. I have to fix my own sink when I accidentally break the cold water dial off. Or drive myself to the emergency room after getting third degree burns as a result of not doing so, whichever.
I can't wait to read this again in another ten years and laugh at my youthful naivete. Assuming that reading and laughter still exist in another decade, that is. I'm hoping they're going to be replaced with hovercars.
