there's never a wish better than this, when you only got one hundred years to live. let's say by the grace of god or some minor miracle of technology, i were to survive until i were a hundred. people at that point would ask me things about the 21st century, because really, all we ask of our old people is to remember what their youths were like. when people live to to be a hundred, rarely do we ask them about their opinion on events of the day -- since we seem biased towards our youthful version of the present -- we inevitably ask old people to reminisce and to tell us about "way back when."

assuming that i was still somewhat lucid and capable of intelligible speech as a centenarian, people would ask me things like "so what was y2k like? was not being able to teleport hard? how was watching 2D movies? was monogamy boring? did you celebrate when the red sox won their last title? what was living through 9/11 like? did people really wear denim on denim? was earth pretty? did milkshakes really bring the boys to the yard?"

and what would my answer to these questions be? in my old age, desperate for attention and conversation, would i go with the truth? would i offer boring accounts of "well, i spent the turn of the new century in front of my tv in jersey city, alone and doing nothing." or would i make up some dramatic story about how i had hunkered down with my friends, family, randomly assorted refugees, water, spam, and sardines, waiting for the world to end? would i tell eager ears about the potential disaster that was the y2k bug? would i regale them with stories about those crazy automobiles and airplanes and how much noise they made? would i pretend that red sox baseball was important to me, just because it was a moment in history? simply put, would i make up shit about my twenties and thirties just so that people would keep listening?

old timers have it rough man. may i never live to one hundred.