From news services: Air

traffic controllers across New Zealand, unable to

communicate with each other as a result of a computer

glitch, scramble to locate scores of flights.

A backup system is

activated; no mishaps are reported.

And this: Americans

receiving parcels from Germany are advised to handle them

cautiously and call police if packages are unexpected. A

heretofore faithful Internet server refuses to function.

Suggests check password or modem configuration. Nothing

has changed - it's just not working.

I step on the bathroom

scales, a habit that usually starts my day off depressed.

But this time the message is neither bad nor good. The

little window with its mocking numbers never lights up,

but remains stone cold non-judgmental black. The phone

rings. No one's there. The furnace does not come on and

the house is cold. Not a glitch Dave can fix. Call the

service guy, who can't come for several days. At Kroger,

my credit card declines to scan. I begin to worry. No

plastic money? This is a glitch Dave can fix, with the

old-fashioned green kind.

In the middle of one of our

favorite Beethoven piano concertos, the car radio goes

silent. We jiggle knobs; it comes back on. Off. Back on.

Then off for good - until Lois Reitzes apologizes

that WABE has lost the satellite feed for Karl Haas.

Doesn't matter. By this time, we're fiddling with the

heater which has also gone south at the worst time of the

year. A virtually new car, and the heater doesn't work?

How can this be? What else will go wrong?

We look at each other.

"Did you notice something odd about Old Grunt last

night?" Dave asks. Old Grunt is his mother's

grandfather clock, so named because it complains bitterly

about any kind of change. Daylight Saving Time wasn't

Grunt's idea and he resents the twice-annual adjustments.

Behind the pure Westminster chimes, if you listen

closely, you can hear him grunting and groaning as his

elderly gears strain to tell an hour he doesn't believe

in.

"I couldn't

sleep," Dave continues, "and I noticed that at

midnight, Grunt didn't strike at all. Did the chimes, but

not the strike. And at 12:30 he struck 11. At 1 a.m., he

was back in synch again." "Nonsense," I

shake my head. "You know how that clock works. Each

set of chimes and strikes has to follow in a certain

order, or the whole thing is off. And he's OK today. You

must have imagined it." "Like you imagined the

piano wasn't working?" he retorts.

I wince. I began to play a

hymn at church, but the piano made only a little sound as

though every string was heavily muffled - nothing

anyone 10 feet away could possibly hear. As worshippers

looked at me with puzzled expressions, I banged harder on

the keyboard, to no avail. That's when I glanced down at

the damper pedal and realized that this particular piano

can be silenced by pushing the pedal down and to one side

where it catches under the framework and mutes the works.

What was happening?

"The microwave. You

didn't hear it last night?" Dave asks, slowly. The

microwave built into our old range succumbed to lightning

several years ago. Rather than install a new one in a

stove we'll replace soon, we bought a small stand-alone

and set it on the counter. The old one makes a dandy

cabinet for cereal and crackers. Recently it's begun

making odd noises, clicks and screeches, all on its own.

Dave can't fix it, but assured me there is no danger.

Until that strange night when it also began flashing

lights bright enough to illuminate everything in the

room. Then the fan started running.

I slept through the

commotion. Shaking his head in disbelief, Dave severs all

electric connections to that part of the stove. What a

day! Except it was NOT on a single day that all these

things happened. They took place over the course of

several months. But if any or all of them DO occur on

Jan. 1, you know someone will blame the fact that the

calendar has flipped to a new millennium.

Stuff happens. Every day.

That's the only thing that worries me about the so-called

"Y2K crisis," that glitches like any of these

will happen somewhere Friday night. And someone will

panic and do something stupid. Stuff happens. Every day.

Terrorists may seize upon our hysteria to work their

mischief, but they might do that any time. (And

meanwhile, darn it, our Christmas presents from Germany

have not been delivered.)

As for large crowds, we

plan to stay out of them anyway. Did last year and the

year before that, and the year before... Listen: As

imprecisely as the Western calendar was designed, and as

uncertain as scholars are about the exact date of

Christ's birth, there is nothing mystic at all about

midnight, Jan. 1, 2000. Sure, I understand how the

double-zero could cause computers to fail, but should we

predict the end of the world on that date? I don't think

so.

The only real Y2K bug is

the one gnawing its way into the minds of misled

survivalists and the superstitious. Easy for me -

the co-owner of a camper with a full water tank and a

generator - to say. And if my computer goes down, my

guru, who assures me it will be OK, will have more to

worry about than just the end of the world.

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