Emily Articulated: TEOTWAWKI

By Emily Erickson
Reader Columnist

If you’re reading this, the world is still spinning, and we’ve survived to swap our old calendars for new ones. This sentiment — the quiet marvel of continuation — was what I remember from the turn of the millennium (or, at least it was among the adults).

Personally, the existential musings of Y2K took a back seat to a far more pressing decision: choosing the perfect calendar for my wall for the year 2000. I knew, in the way all 8-year-olds know, that the one I’d choose would set the tone for the year ahead. I was ready to leave behind my holographic Lisa Frank aesthetic — rainbow kittens, puppies and unicorns — for a more “mature” look: glossy, real-life photographs of kittens, puppies and horses. I’d be 9 in 2000, after all.

Around me, and despite my inability to clock it all as anything other than “childhood,” the millennium was more than just a number change — it was a cultural moment. Cher’s “Believe” dominated the airwaves, sitting atop the Billboard Top 100 for four weeks (coincidentally making her the oldest female artist to hold the spot). Dick Clark presided over Times Square on TV, the glittering ball poised above millions of decked-out New Yorkers, undulating to the beat of whatever performance was on stage.

Emily Erickson. Courtesy photo.

Clark’s voice hummed from the TV in the living room of a house I’d never been to before, but one that was expertly festooned in twinkling lights and shiny plastic decorations, making it inviting, nonetheless. A large fold-up table was crammed against the wall, groaning under the weight of bowls of “good dips,” chips and pretzels, and plates of ham-and-pickle roll-ups sliced like the sushi I’d only seen in movies.

My mom added a small crockpot of warmed Velveeta and Rotel beside another bubbling with little smokies, complete with tinsel-topped toothpicks (she bought the fancy ones to mark the significance of the past thousand years).

Every face around me looked the same, in the way all unfamiliar adults do, each flushed with excitement and alcohol, and smooshed behind paper glasses with the 00s of 2000 making up the eye-holes — a trend that spans the decades without ever quite making sense in the way the first ones did.

But beneath the revelry and streamers, behind the grins and glinting eyes, was a twinge of tension; a pulse of wondering. Would everything fall apart at midnight?

In the months leading up to the new millennium, Y2K — the so-called “Year 2000 problem” — dominated headlines. A software glitch in older programs, which recorded years using only two digits, sparked fears that computers would misinterpret “00” as 1900, leading to widespread chaos.

Worst-case scenarios included power outages, medical equipment failures, financial system breakdowns and halted transportation. The anxiety even inspired the acronym TEOTWAWKI — “the end of the world as we know it.” Religious fundamentalists fueled the fire, linking the bug to apocalyptic prophecies such as the Second Coming and the Tribulation.

Faced with even a slim chance of disaster, people responded in different ways. Some retreated to remote cabins, stockpiling supplies. Others threw wild parties, determined to face oblivion in a haze of laughter and champagne. And others still quietly placed another ham-pickle roll in their napkins, determined to stay awake longer than their siblings.

Yet, as midnight struck and confetti rained down, the feared apocalypse never came. Disposable cameras clicked, voices shouted “Happy New Year” and life continued. The computers didn’t crash, the lights stayed on and planes stayed airborne. The world hadn’t ended. And yet, in the years to come, everything would change in ways no one had anticipated. Y2K wasn’t the cataclysm; the real upheavals were still on the horizon.

Now, a quarter of a century later, that feeling of standing on the brink feels familiar. We face a new year with the same mix of anticipation and uncertainty, unsure of what lies ahead. The next quarter-century could bring breakthroughs or calamities — or both. The end of the world as we know it may still come, though probably not in the ways we expect.

Such is the rhythm of time. As the ball drops and Ryan Seacrest’s voice replaces Dick Clark’s, one truth remains: the future is unknowable. And so, we brace ourselves — whether by celebrating with abandon, retreating to solitude or simply trying to stay awake long enough to greet whatever comes next.

Emily Erickson is a writer and business owner with an affinity for black coffee and playing in the mountains. Connect with her online at www.bigbluehat.studio.