Now is the time for Twenty! Are you ready?

Just 10 years ago we were preparing for our entry into a new century.  Not really because the new century began with the year 2001.  (Two Thousand One).  We were face to face with the end of time.  Surely all of the clocks in the world would stop, because computer programmers hadn't planned on a year beginning with 20 instead of 19. Airplanes would fall from the sky, and nuclear defense systems would collapse at the stroke of midnight January 1, 2000.
When we awoke on New Years Day that next morning, the sun had come up as it had for centuries, the newspaper was in the mailbox and small birds few across the sky in erratic patterns.  Just as Ebenezer Scrooge awakened on Christmas morning and everything was, as it was, and it was good, so had we awakened to the dawn of a new day, and it was New Years Day.  The world had not ended.  There was hope.  The new decade was here, and those next ten years were certainly tumultuous.  However, as we look backward at those years how will we label it?

I grew up in the 60's and 70's.  LA and I were married in the 90's.  Maybe we could call the last decade the Two Thousands.  A local radio station personality quipped they should be called the 'Naught Years'.

Further complicating the this dilemma is the fact that some people referred to some individual years as 'two oh four', 'two oh six' or 'two oh nine'.  When I took my car for service, the tech at Bonner Chevrolet would ask me which car I had for service that day.  I'd say, "I have the Oh four Impala", or "The Oh five Malibu.  He understood.  LA is considering a new vehicle in a few months, how will I refer to it's year of origin?

I recently watched an episode of "The Colbert Report", where Stephen refers to the Vancouver Olympics as occurring in "Oh ten".  So is the next decade to be nameless as the last?  Shall it fade into obscurity?  Will the next decade be an extension of the unnamed one just past?

Let's cut the cord and separate the past decade with the new one born this week.  I say we are ready for Twenty!  "Twenty Ten".  It has a familiar ring to it.  It wasn't so long ago that we started all of our years with "Nineteen".  Let's not be satisfied with another year or decade of indecisiveness by calling next year "Two Thousand Ten", or the inevitable predictable "Oh Ten".

If we don't act now, we run the risk of having future generations wonder why we weren't thinking ahead.

Happy New Year, Twenty Ten