On The Other Hand

By Connie A. Anast

I got a call from my mother the other day. She wanted to know what I had in my house that could hold water. I thought that was an interesting question. It was, of course, the prompting of a worried mother in light of the biggest potential catastrophe of the world. The year 2000, the dreaded date, the tick-tock heard round the world...

A bunch of crap.

Oh, don't get me wrong, there are some serious things that could result from this electronic perversion, and I don't blame those people who want to be "safe than sorry." I didn't even laugh at the families in line at the check stand behind me who had five cases of toilet paper. I felt odd only having a gallon of milk and some Reeses cereal. A family can use that toilet paper up quite fast, and if there are girls in the house, forget it! As for my mother, she went to the store and bought a case of this and a case of that...a good idea no matter what date it is...

But let me tell you my take on the whole Y2K thing.

God is cool. He is funny. He also has a wonderful sense of humor. All this time, while we have been interpreting the Bible, Torah, Koran...we, as a race, collectively believe in an Armageddon....and no, I don't mean where Bruce Willis will save the world. We all believe in war, disease, famine, drought, flood, earthquakes, fire, unusual weather...all symbols of the coming of the Lord and the end of the world. The virtuous, righteous and, don't forget, religious will be saved and the rest of us poor saps will be left wallowing in the fire and lava of a world in ruin. Essentially.

But, trust me, there is nothing written in the vast scriptures about a computer glitch.

And God knows this. That is why He is laughing. He knows that no matter what He can rain down upon us, it is nothing compared to what we, as a race, can do to ourselves. God won't bring down Nuclear Missiles, the computer geek who forgot two extra numerals at the end of the date would be responsible for that. God won't make the food disappear out of the grocery stores, it is the mass panic of three generations of people running to the local market to stock up on spam and onions that will make it happen.

Y2K will be nothing. Nothing but what we in our electronic-dependent society have created for ourselves.

I have firewood, lamps, candles, a dutch oven and 15 gallons of water in the garage. I have food on hand to survive two weeks with nothing else...probably longer depending on how I stretch it. And, let me tell you, I have had all these things way before I even thought of 01/01/00. I have done nothing special except buy a new romance novel and get everything a little more organized.

But these are things that should have been done all along, folks. And I believe, after the clock strikes midnight and, God willing, there are still people to populate this planet, we will all be a little more aware of how precarious life can be. Whether it is a bad snowstorm, tornado, or even the loss of a job, there should be food storage, if possible. There should be bottled water, just in case.

And, of course, all the credit for all the panic should be given right back to us. We created it. And God's enjoying the human folly, hoping that we have learned our lesson well.