It feels quite strange the first time
you do it. Hopefully, I'll get used to it quickly.
Because I'm working ahead on all kinds
of stuff for all my jobs, this past weekend I had the opportunity to
write down a date. This date, to be specific--
1/23/20
Writing the “20” part of it threw
me for a loop for a second. It didn’t feel right as I was writing
it, nor did it look “right” when I was finished. Yet there it
was, a date just a month or so away, written down by the very person
it was throwing off for a second.
Although I don’t remember, I’d have
to guess that I was probably just as thrown off a decade ago,
whenever I first had to write down something like “1/23/10”. But
because I don’t remember, I’m guessing I became used to it quite
quickly, just as I probably because used to writing “1/23/00”
right away and just as I’ll probably become quite used to writing
(and seeing) “1/23/20” soon.
Maybe the strange thing is this—it
really doesn't SEEM like we're at the end of a decade, does it? To
me, at least, it just seems like it's the end of another year. It
doesn't seem like the end of 1999, when the world was gonna end, or
the end of 2009, or the end of any decade. For whatever reason,
there just seem to be the pomp or the circumstance or the “this is
what happened the past 10 years” feature upon feature in media. I
don't know if it's because the world's too weird these days or we
just don't have a centralized, shared media any more, or I don't
know if I just haven't been paying attention.
But it sure doesn't seem like it's the
end of the decade. And maybe THAT'S why I was so thrown off by
writing down a simple date.
(jim@wmqt.com),
who will (hopefully) get used to it soon.
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