Remember when you were a kid and, like, January 9 would roll around, you'd find it kinda cool that if you wrote down the date it would look significant? I remember January 9, 1983, because I wrote down 1/9/83, and I could cleverly rewrite it as "1983", and hey, it would match the year exactly. Remember August 8, 1988, which was written as 8/8/88? Really, you tried to make it seem important; tried to see if the significance in numbers could actually be manifested in reality. You fantasized that the sky would turn black, or the walls would talk. Anything. What most probably happened is that you scratched out "1/9/83" on a piece of paper and pretended that you couldn't tell the difference between that and "1983". Thrill City. Hey, even 12:34:56 on July 8, 1990 felt extra-special-cool, but afterwards, nothing changed. The reason that nothing changed is because nothing in the physical world was directly tied to these dates. The calendar and clock are man-made devices, which only hold significance in ourselves and in the way we communicate with each other, and when the moments pass, life goes on.

Well in a couple of days, it'll be September 9, 1999. 9/9/99.  For the most part, this would be another one of those days, but the computer world would disagree. Many computer systems were written to consider 9/9/99 (internally represented as "9999") to be a good "end-of" or "stop program" marker. This has been recognized by the computer industry as one of the first significant "check-dates" for the Y2K issues soon to pop-up.

Now, I'm not trying to encourage any Y2K malarkey here. I'm no Chicken Little. But it's certainly possible that some computer system somewhere will malfunction. And when it does, the media will pounce on it, and rest-assured, it will be easy for you to find it out. The great thing here is that you will finally be able to perform the age-old ritual of acknowledging the numerological significance of a calendar's date and, probably for the first time, OBSERVE A DIRECTLY-RELATED EFFECT. These machines which are used to augment communication between human beings, have taken our once-meaningless significances and made them real.

This is such a historically significant event, so grand, that today's youths that are just learning this game won't quite grasp what they're experiencing. It's only those of us who have grown up, yet still held on to our childhood, that can fully revel in finally winning the game that they played and lost so many times in our youth.

Some folks may think that what I'm suggesting is even sillier than worrying about Y2K. My response is the same one I used when I was even more child-like than I am now: "You just don't understand." You can go about your business. That's fine. I'll be monitoring the media, waiting for the lights to dim, feeling cool and scribbling "9/9/99" every once in a while.

Robert Konigsberg

September 8, 1999