Life in the Year 2000

by Lewis Grizzard

Ever since the 1980’s began, I’ve been counting down to the new century.

According to my latest calculations, the year 2000 should be here in slightly less than twelve years.

I don’t know about anybody else, but I am glad I’ve got a shot at living to see a turn of the century.

According to further calculations, there’s only been nineteen of those so far. Not everybody gets a chance to witness such a momentous occasion.

IF I make it to 2000, I’ll be fifty-three. That’s not nearly as old as I once thought it was. I might still have enough left in me by then to throw a giant turn-of-the-century party at my condo on the moon, where some developer no doubt will have built a golf course.

I’ve also been considering what problems we might encounter when the new century arrives.

I can’t think of how we’re going to say "2000" in regard, say to the World Series.

This year we will say, "Welcome to the 1989 World Series."

Somehow, however, I can’t come to grips with "Welcome to the 2000 World Series."

It seems awkward and cumbersome to say that, and the only other time there was such a problem was in the year 1000, when there was no baseball.

And think about checks. All our lives, we would have written checks with the little "19" up where you fill in the year in which you are writing the check.

Twelve years from now, you’ll pull out a check and there will be a little "20" up there in the corner.

Then, again, there probably won’t be any checks by the year 2000. You’ll have your own computer that is hooked into the bank and you’ll simply punch in the amount of you withdrawal and the bank will put your money in a tube that leads directly to your house.

The only real problem will be learning to count in yen.

Think of the state of things by the year 2000.

• Somebody will have figured out by then how to make a commercial airliner go five thousand miles per hour. Of course, it will still take forty-five minutes to get the plane from its gate to its takeoff position.

• It will have been determined that heavy exercise, like jogging and aerobics, causes flat feet, hepatitis, and acne.

• The Wall Street Journal will have run a photo on page one; and USA Today will have printed an article with more than eleven sentences — three compound.

• Dentists will have figured out how to fill your teeth using a laser beam rather than a drill. It will cost twenty-seven times more to have a tooth filled, nullifying any loss of pain.

• McDonald’s will be selling goat sandwiches.

• Everybody will have seen every episode of M*A*S*H SIX HUNDRED TIMES.

• The federal deficit will be so large by then, we will have to sell off North Dakota, Montana, and that silly-looking top part of Idaho to the Canadians.

• Dogs will be able to talk. They will say, "I’ve always enjoyed Alpo, but it gives me gas."

• Elvis will still be dead.

• So will the Atlanta Falcons.