Most of us "baby

boomers" probably never thought we would make it

through 1984, much less see the dawning of the new

millennium.

After all, we all knew that

Big Brother was watching us - and we also knew that

he had his finger on the button that unleashed The Bomb.

For us, who lived through

the political chess game known as the Cold War, nuclear

war was not only not unthinkable: It was expected in our

lifetime.

We knew that the two

supper-powers would eventually unleash their missiles on

each other, as surely as those of us raised in the Bible

Belt knew that the Second Coming of Jesus would probably

occur in our lifetimes.

Why, when we were just

entering high school - and still hitching rides from

our older siblings because we had not yet passed the

magic age when we got our licenses to drive - we

watched as the world teetered and tottered toward the

brink of nuclear extinction during what became known as

the Cuban Missile Crisis.

So, most of us certainly

never expected to see the century turn and that mythical

time known as the Year 2000 become a reality.

But, it is almost here

- and most of us "baby boomers" are still

here to see it.

Obviously, if we had

stopped to think back then and do a little math, we would

have realized - as any insurance agent's mortality

tables would have revealed - that even the

first-born members of our generation would only be

entering their 50s and our youngest brothers and sisters

might just be becoming established in their careers and

beginning their families.

But, back when we were in

college, the turn of the century seemed so far in the

future that none of us worried much about whether we

would live to see it or not.

(Our parents often wondered

if we worried about anything - and, indeed, one of

the posters many of us use to used to keep on our my

bedroom walls portrayed a shaggy-haired, snaggle-toothed

young man whose slogan was, "What? Me Worry?")

Back then, one of our

generation's favorite "cult" movies was

"2001: A Space Odyssey" - and we all

believed that by the time that magic date was reached,

space travel really would be commonplace, Corporate

America would have learned some way to make a profit off

of it, and our computers would have become so smart that

they were dangerous.

Well, those

far-in-the-future dates - whether they came from the

title of a popular book or of a movie - have now

come and gone or are almost here.

And, despite all the

progress we have made, we are not as far ahead of where

we were as our literary prophets forecast, nor as many of

us naively expected us to be.

So, now we find ourselves

living in that mystery-shrouded future we all dreamed of

- or dreaded - and we have found that it is not

all that different from the world in which we were born

and bred.

In the early days of

television, Walter Cronkite used to narrate a dramatic

show called "You Are There" which attempted to

portray historic events as if they were being covered

live by a television news crew for the evening broadcast.

And, he would end every

show with the same words: "What kind of day was it?

A day like every other day - and you were

there."

The same could be said of

the future we faced that has now arrived.

As the Third Millennium

dawns, there are probably more than a few of us aging

"baby boomers" who might want to dig through

our closets, find our old out-of-tune guitars, and look

for the words to that plaintive old Peggy Lee song,

"Is That All There Is?"

[Lee N. Howell is an

award-winning writer who has been observing politics and

society in the Southern Crescent, the state, and nation

for more than a quarter of a century.]

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