A Y2K Hitch
Well today's the day! It's Y2K. You till there? Lights still on? Quick go get a glass of water, tap still running? ISP operative? Well, if not I guess I'm talking to myself again.
Well, to be honest, I wrote this just before the big bang, so to speak. For all you or I know, I'm falling out of the sky in a Jumbo Jet this very minute, or running head long into an oncoming car because my power steering and ABS system forgot they should work in the year 2000!
Well, it's a new millennium, so enjoy it, if you can. Unless you enjoyed the going of the last one so much you still have a hangover fit for a planet ... Or is it? A new millennium that is. Now just watch me swing wide here and weave the most unbelievable themes into hitch-hiking. It's a special occasion after all, so we need a special hitch-hiker.
There's a kind of hitcher I've run into again and again over the last year. The Y2K hitcher. A special breed of person, latching not onto other peoples vehicles, but their ideas.
It's not unique to Y2K, heck it's universal, around us all day everyday. It just struck me a little more than usual with Y2K approaching, like a sore thumb that won't go away, throbbing at you everywhere you turn.
It works like this: One person has a cute idea, and a lot of other people hitch a ride on it.
Many of us carry special kind of love for knowing something the rest don't. That smug kind of one-up feeling. We hold up this little gem of a fact like a flag and wave it about, shouting "look at me, ain't I spiffy, bet you didn't know that!"
Now sometimes we have a cute idea ourselves, or an insight, and share it around proudly. But more often, of necessity, there are after all, only so many ideas to go around, we pinch someone else's. It matter's not that we're not the first person on the bandwagon, but at least we're in with the first of them.
Now there are two special ideas that kept hitting me in the face, like a wet fish, again and again this year. One is so big you've all seen it, so I'll leave it till last. The other brought a smile to my face.
It struck me once walking the streets of Geneva. There were suddenly stickers all over declaring (in French of course) "What are you all excited about? The third millennium doesn't start till January 1st 2001!" Then I saw it again in other towns, in other languages. And always I'd smile. True enough, not so many as to call them a slap in the face with a wet fish, that's the other idea (we'll get around to that).
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