Twenty Ten Chances Ruined

For nine years I've been thinking about ways to change people from the long winded reading of the date Two Thousand and TEN to the much more sensible Twenty Ten and so far no dice. Correcting people in a grammar-nazi fashion has little effect. Using logic "we never say "SNL was funnier in One Thousand Nine Hundred and Ninety" yields much the same. This shouldn't be a problem really, since vibrating an extra syllable on my delicate eardrum does not truly make it bleed, but I can't help but think of Fox News dictating the nation's thoughts every time I hear the venomous version of our years.

It just doesn't make sense. We're a nation of corner cutters. We're lazy and simultaneously in a rush so we stand on escalators which allows us to get there quicker with less effort, the exact same way that Twenty Ten does. But still everyone rambles on just like they're taking the stairs but without the benefit of exercising those forgotten glut muscles. Sure I'd say Two Thousand and Ten if I thought my pants would look better on me over time, but it is not the case.

Finally I realized why I'm not going to win this one woman war against words and the reason is science fiction and nerds. Think back to every sci fi movie that took place in the DISTANT future. Terminator happened in Twenty Twenty-Nine; Red Planet Twenty Fifty; Bladerunner Twenty Nineteen. People hear those dates in sci fi style historical narrative and start thinking next we'll be saying Stardate before perfectly normal days when we're not even in space. I bet if any normy actually started reading this blog the moment their eyes scanned the successive numbers Twenty Ten they immediately imagined a greasy nerd pushing up their glasses and snorting. That's what I've got to compete with, nobody wants to admit that this shortcut is uncool.

My nerd friend said it best however when he explained "Two Thousand Twelve is just a couple of years away, but Twenty Twelve is the future, and that's scary."