Main Page Blog Getting Pregnant Articles Pregnancy Articles Parenting Articles TLOL Article Directory Chinese Gender Chart Pregnancy and Parenting Journals	I'm Not Paranoid, It's Just That Everyone's Out To Get Me We are being calm and sensible about the looming menace of Y2K. We have stocked up on some prescription and non-prescription drugs (asthma inhalers, paracetamol, Band-Aids, that sort of thing). We have some extra bottled water, dried pasta, tinned tomatoes. And a house full of cardboard boxes, but that's because we've just moved house (again!) not because they might be of any use. (I suppose we could keep warm with them, but I've only just thought of that, it wasn't the original rationale!) Just for fun (ho ho) I thought I'd look up 'millennialism' on the Net just now. I've watched a couple of TV program about 'end-of-the-world-isms' and that, coupled with the horrendous weather we've had in South Eastern Australia this last couple of days, plus the storms in Europe, made me think about millennialism a bit. The Net search left me deeply worried - not that the world IS about to end, but about the existence of the nutters who proliferate their ideas in cyberspace. There's the usual claptrap about aliens, freemasons, etc. I suppose at least that the Biblical references are appropriate, considering that we use the AD calendar system and all that. But per-lease!!! I just hope that none of these nutters do anything appalling because they think that the world is about to end in a rain of fireballs, or whatever it is that they think. When Tamsin and Angus are older, it might amuse them to look back on some of the things that people believed in the last days of the second millennium. (And I'm not going to engage in THAT argument. I've got to believe in it this year, because I'm going to a Millennium dinner-party, and then next year I've got to say that I didn't believe it, because friends are having a party only for those who can state that they didn't believe 1999 was it!) Six- and three-year-olds, of course, are just pleased that Santa visited them (and found the new house, too - clever Santa). Tamsin knows that each year has a different number - she is aware that she was born in 1993, that Angus was born in 1996, and that this is 1999. 2000 is just another number to her. (And Angus is too young to understand). She is more caught up in moving into another new house (with a swimming pool - she is pleased!) and another school, and to her I think the year 2000 will be just that, another year, another house, another school. Of course if the world ends, she may remember it differently! I joked to Graham has we arranged our hasty and ill-conceived move that this was the stuff of disaster movies. The ones that carefully introduced a number of characters going about their daily business, and then dropped an earthquake or comet on them. A family moving house just in time for Christmas seemed ideal fodder to have the world end around them before they'd even unpacked! Y1K, as I saw it amusingly referred to recently, was just like this too. In 999, or 1000, or whenever they actually did celebrate the end of the First Millennium (presumably some had a bet both ways, like me), there were doom and gloom merchants running around proclaiming the end of the world. Their terminology wasn't much different from that I read on a Website an hour ago - conspiracy theories, raining fire, evil angels and Satan coming back to earth, etc. The computer thing adds an extra dimension to our latter-day millennialists, of course. Plus the fact that we have all got rather used to mod cons like, well, electricity, running water, roofs over our heads, Satan not frolicking in our midst. Years ago when I was living in London in the era of Ronald Regan and Margaret Thatchers's fond imaginings of Limited Nuclear War (i.e. total obliteration of Europe), a terrifying television program was shown called Threads, I think, about nuclear holocaust and its effects on Britain. It did the usual disaster movie bit, showing dull little people going about their dull little lives, and then being suddenly transported to surviving in a post-holocaust world. It gave me nightmares for weeks. Despite being an affitianado of these types of films and books, I find it completely impossible to imagine life in a week's time if the plug really is pulled. I suppose that if I did imagine it fully I would crawl into a corner and never emerge until the threat was over (or not, as the case may be). I really do hope that we will be able to tell our children about the silly people who thought that the world would end at midnight on 31st December 1999. If not, you might never read this! On the off-chance that you actually do manage to read this in the year 2000, may it bring you all that you desire! Judy Edmonds was born in England, grew up in Australia and is married to Graham Peters, a fifth-generation Australian. From 1990-1999 they lived in England - it was meant to be a two year working holiday but it took on a life of its own. They returned to Australia in May 1999, and are enjoying readjusting. Judy worked as an academic librarian until the birth of Tamsin in 1993, and since then has been a full-time mother to her and to Angus, born 1996. She is now embarking on a new career as a freelance journalist. Her writing can be found all over the Internet now, and she is the owner/editor of an Australian parenting EZine, Chloe & Jack.