Is it just me, or does life feel like one long issue of The Onion these days? Or that the people we elect to see to our best interests are on one extended bender, with no hope of putting down the glass or unrolling the straw? I guess I can see the point, though – that hangover will be a biitch.
It’s been an interesting century thus far. Hard to believe that 20 years has gone by, right? Remember how Y2K was a big deal? How a lot of us were fearful of a Skynet-level catastrophe? Planes falling from the sky, they said. Potential infrastructure crumbling and finances being wiped out, they said. SMH… I felt like I was listening to a broadcast of The War of The Worlds, giving the ginormous amount of predicted calamities, and the public’s similar response. Oh, the humanity!
I remember exactly where I was at the dawn of the century – at a basement party getting smashed (Y2K was the year I turned 21). I wore my hair in crochet braids, a tailored pinstriped Zoot Suit and high heeled boots (that ensemble got a bunch of funny looks from the partygoers, as I was delightfully overdressed). I was excited on so many levels – The computer age was fully upon us! Flying cars! Jumpsuits with odd collars! Rocket shoes! Homes in the clouds! 3 hour workdays! Snarky domestic robots!
Or, so we thought.
The year broke like all the others before it – with a whisper instead of a roar. The buildup many feeling cheated, especially those of us who’d listen to additional doomsday propaganda touted by questionable religious leaders (you know who you are) and gave up our entire lives. It’s hard to believe that as advanced as we’ve become, we’re still hiding in caves, fearful of the dark.
We’ve gone through quite a bit as a country in 2 decades, from bombings and war to mass shootings being a freaking norm and civil unrest. There were some bright spots, too, like the near-universal legalization of both gay marriage and marijuana (fingers crossed!), as well as the election of a minority president. I’m deliberately glossing over quite a bit, because we need to get to now. How did we get here, and how will we survive whatever it is that may be coming?
I don’t have any answers-just more questions. Though I’m a stone cold cynic, I have to believe that we’ll put aside what has divided us and come together and present a unified front. We need each other today, tomorrow, and beyond. It would be nice to not have a conflict of some nature in the first two decades of a century for a change, you know?
Let us hope for the best.
Liz K
Classy With An E 