10/15/2026
My very young coworker saw this sticker in our sticker bowl and asked me, “Was this really a thing?”
YES, BABY. YES IT WAS. 🙌🏻😂
Gather around, children. Memaw has a history lesson.
Let me take you back to 1999, when the entire world was convinced that at the stroke of midnight on December 31st, civilization as we knew it might come to a screeching halt.
We called it Y2K.
See, nobody knew for certain if all those computers were going to recognize the year 2000 or think we’d gone back to 1900. And apparently, that meant everything from banks to airplanes to power grids might just lose their minds.
People were withdrawing cash from banks, stocking up on canned goods, buying bottled water, batteries, flashlights, generators, and enough toilet paper to survive the apocalypse.
Some folks were convinced airplanes were going to fall out of the sky. Others thought the electricity would go out, the banking system would collapse, and we’d all be cooking beans over a fire in the backyard.
And you better believe somebody’s uncle had a bunker full of Vienna sausages and enough supplies to survive until 2005. 😂
We were glued to the television watching the countdown, wondering if the lights were going to go out at midnight.
And then there was that Mayan calendar business years later, when everybody thought the world was ending AGAIN in 2012. Apparently, surviving one apocalypse wasn’t enough for our generation.
But back to Y2K.
Midnight came.
The ball dropped.
The year changed to 2000.
And nothing catastrophic happened. Thanks in large part to all those computer programmers who spent years fixing the problem.
We woke up January 1st, 2000, with working electricity, functioning bank accounts, and enough canned green beans to feed the county.
And now here I am, 26 years later, explaining to a coworker that YES, we really did think the computers might take us all out.
I swear, being old enough to remember something that’s now considered a HISTORY LESSON is a humbling experience. 😂
Who else remembers Y2K?
