More New Year Notes

While I was lying around sick last week, I head an announcer on the radio call it “Twenty-Oh-Six,” which is still the less common way to put 2006, after the dominant “Two Thousand Six.” But I fairly sure that 2020 will be called “Twenty Twenty” and every year after that will begin with “Twenty.” That’s already the main usage for those future years.

But when will it kick in? It seems a safe bet that 2009 will use “Two Thousand,” but what about after that? “Twenty Ten” or “Two Thousand Ten”? Etc. Such are the things that come to mind on a sick bed.

At some other point I tried the “Clarence the Angel” thought experiment on my own life. Not all of us get to be George Bailey, I think. Maybe none of us, since sentimental fiction can be a fine thing, but not a guide to real life. Besides, the contingencies of life are such a web of variables that the result of untangling one life can only involve speculation, and dim speculation at that.

Still, if Clarence came to show me the world without me, I suspect that only my wife and children would really be affected—the latter, of course, by not existing themselves. As for most of the other people I’ve known, they might have had slightly less interesting lives in my absence. Or not, since they could have spent the time interacting with me doing something else.

Melancholy thoughts? Maybe. I was on my sickbed. I’m better now, and not especially bothered by the conclusion I came to. The same is true, I suspect, for the vast majority of people, and it’s probably better that way. Image a world populated by George Baileys, in which the web of humanity was so fragile it depended on each person to keep from being torn to pieces.