In visiting with a friend, we got talking about some trouble we were having with technology. As we did, the subject turned to something I hadn’t thought about in a long time, the concern everyone had about problems that would occur on January 1, 2000. Though I ended up with a few issues, including a server that deleted all the emails, huge problems didn’t materialize.
“You know,” my friend said, “it almost seemed like those who understood technology the least were the ones who were most afraid of it.”
“That seems to be the case with most things,” I replied. “We are afraid of what we don’t understand. Being a math teacher, I see that in my students day after day.”
“Well, that was definitely true for my brothers, Kyle and John, and my sister, Linda,” he said. He then told me their story.
Kyle and John were definite geeks, while Linda had a phobia of anything to do with technology. As the year 2000 approached, she even tried to talk her husband, George, into going out in the woods and camping far away from anything that could carry electricity. However, though he was not a techy kind of guy, he didn’t fear it as much as she did.
Kyle and John convinced him that all would be okay, but Linda still wasn’t sure. She didn’t sleep too much leading up to the big day and often called them to make sure they hadn’t heard of something that was going to go wrong. They would do their best to reassure her.
But John was a bit of a prankster, and Kyle wasn’t far behind him in that area. John talked Kyle into having a “little fun” on New Year’s Eve. “It won’t be anything dangerous,” he assured Kyle, “and it may even help our sister understand there is nothing to fear but fear itself.”
So, on New Year’s Eve, the two of them went over to Linda’s house. They knew their sister well and knew she would have the whole family up, waiting and ready to toast the new year, at least if she hadn’t gone off and hidden somewhere.
They got to Linda’s house before eleven. Linda liked to watch the ball drop in New York and see the year roll over in the Eastern and Central time zones before it hit their mountain time zone. John wanted to make sure she was still following the tradition. He knew if she was, her fear would be fading away, seeing nothing happening in those areas. They snuck up and waited near the living room window. At exactly eleven o’clock, they heard the family cheers.
The two brothers then went to the garage, and John tested the door. Sure enough, it was unlocked. They had all lived in this rural area their entire lives, and no one ever felt a need to lock their doors. They snuck into the garage and got into position. Kyle climbed into the car while John went over and stood by the breaker box that contained the main house breaker.
John had set his watch to the exact time, so he was ready to give the signal. The hour they had to wait seemed like forever as his watch plodded slowly onward. But finally, the time arrived. John wanted to time it just right, a few seconds after those inside the house would see the ball drop. And that’s what they did.
They barely heard the cheering erupt when he gave the signal and hit the main breaker. Kyle, meanwhile, started honking the car horn, then releasing it. Honk, release, honk, release. The instant they did it, the cheering inside turned into screaming, with Linda’s scream piercing the darkness with enough velocity to wake the dead from a thousand years past.
Kyle continued honking at perfect intervals. Linda’s screaming never subsided, but eventually, George peeked meekly into the garage, a flashlight in his hand. At that instant, John hit the breaker back on, and Kyle quit hitting the horn. They then collapsed into laughter. At least, they did until Linda came into the garage holding a knife with a murderous scowl on her face. Kyle turned to John. “I thought you said it wouldn’t be dangerous.”
In a voice hoarse from screaming, she said, “I disown you from now until a thousand years from now!”
But like everything else, nothing that big actually ended up happening from Y2K.
