It was December 31st, 1999. I had spent the entire month of December hoarding canned beans, bottled water, and — for reasons I still can’t fully explain — seventeen flashlights. Seventeen.
My neighbor, Dave, had gone even further. He’d dug a bunker in his backyard, stocked it with six months of freeze-dried meals, and printed out every important document he owned “just in case the internet explodes.” His words. Just in case the internet explodes.
By 11:50 PM, our whole street was gathered in Dave’s living room watching the Times Square ball drop on his CRT television — the one he’d unplugged and then re-plugged in three times “to reset it before midnight.” We were fully prepared for civilization to collapse. Bank accounts wiped. Power grids down. ATMs turned into expensive paperweights.
Midnight hit.
The lights stayed on.
The TV kept playing.
Someone’s microwave beeped in the kitchen — it had been reheating leftovers this whole time.
Dave stared at the ceiling for a long, silent moment. Then he quietly walked to the garage and came back with a can of beans. “Well,” he said, “we might as well eat these.”
We ate lukewarm baked beans at midnight on New Year’s 2000, surrounded by seventeen flashlights and a stack of printed MapQuest directions to nowhere.
Happy New Year.
I still have fourteen of those flashlights. You never know.