“Grandad?”
Yes, little one?
“What was it like to live in the nineteen hundreds?”
Why do you ask?
“It’s for a school project.”
I see. Well, as far as I can remember, we spent most of our time wondering what it would be like to live in the two thousands. There was a general belief that it would be wonderful, which was the opposite of what some people had thought when we approached nineteen eight-four. They thought George Orwell had written a prediction, not a dystopian novel, and they assumed it would turn out to be true.
On Christmas Day in nineteen eighty-three, they were still insisting that civilisation would collapse the following Sunday, and could not be persuaded otherwise. When it didn’t happen, they either pretended they had been joking or refused to talk about it. This is what stupid people do.
Other than larger parties and an above-average number of firework displays, the start of two thousand was much the same as the start of any other year. After all the fuss had died down, we quickly settled back into the old, familiar routine. Nothing had changed, either for better or for worse. It was, frankly, disappointing.
Then the arguments began. As you know, every fourth year is a leap year, with an extra day in February, and since this had happened in nineteen ninety-six it was assumed that it would happen again in two thousand. People who believed that became very angry with other people who told them the first year of a new century isn’t a leap year, so there would only be twenty-eight days in February. They in turn became very angry with yet more people who said that if the number of the year is divisible by four hundred, as two thousand is, it is a leap year, so there would be twenty-nine.
This led to terrible riots, long jail sentences and other unpleasantness. It was only when newspapers published the day after the twenty-eighth of February were dated the twenty-ninth of February, and not the first of March, that the matter was fully resolved.
But that was only the start of it! Soon afterwards, the Great Arithmetical War – a truly terrible chapter in world history – engulfed the planet. Somebody somewhere mentioned to somebody else in the same place that two thousand was the first year of a new century and a new millennium, whereupon the other person protested that this could not be true because there had never been a year zero, and that two thousand and one would therefore be the first year of both.
Within a week, the human race had descended into anarchy. New Millennianists sought to exterminate members of the Not Yet You Bozos faction, forgetting they had once been friends, and vice versa. Brave men and women died, and cities around the globe were besieged. Peace returned only in two thousand and one, when everyone agreed that whether or not we had been in a new century and millennium the previous year, we definitely were now. But irreparable damage had been done. The Beatles had disbanded in protest, dogs had become extinct, and Belgium had lost its centuries-long sovereignty over Antarctica.
I see you’ve been taking notes. Have I said enough, or do you need more?
“No, that’s enough. Thanks grandad!”
My pleasure.
“Grandad?”
Yes?
“I got a zero for my project.”
Really? Extraordinary! How could that possibly have happened?
“Mummy says she wants to talk to you about it.”
Tell her I’m busy.
Top image by Jingda Chen via Unsplash.
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