Back (1999) to the future (2020)
Mark this calendar for the only time I planned ahead during a busy holiday season.
I reasoned in those anxious days of December 1999 that if we all survived Y2K I would need a column idea on the eve of 2020, so I walked into Christine Bucci’s sixthgrade Cloonan classroom in Stamford and assigned a project. For the final edition of the 20th century, I wanted to know their predictions for far, far into their futures — specifically 2020.
The time has finally come to grade their homework.
The original Amazons: Wonder Woman’s got nothin’ on Beth Dolan and Melanie Aliperti, who introduced a Cyber Mall that far exceeded Jeff Bezos’ primitive vision for his virtual marketplace. They traveled in cars powered by moon dust, dropped a pill that hot water transformed into bacon and eggs and fulfilled the secret desire of any 11yearold, as the Cyber Mall offered knowledge pills that made schools obsolete. On a more modest scale, they were awakened by a robot.
“Jeff Bezos better speed up!” Aliperti observed Friday. “He’s got Alexa waking me up in the morning and a Cyber Mall for all my holiday shopping, but he has yet to come through on the knowledge pills. Must be on the 2021 road map.”
Why sixgraders should study trademarks: Someone followed through on the pitch made by Felecia Lee, Yamiley Mica and Erin An: “You won’t have to remember any telephone numbers. You just say a person’s first name and last name, and the computer is going to call that person.”
There’s still time to “Shark Tank” their other idea, which would implant computer chips in brains so the person could speak foreign languages. Again, just a way to avoid studying.
Cars will fly: No, they won’t. Henry Ford invented a flying car in 1926 with a significant tradeoff — it killed the driver. Ever since the 1939 World’s Fair, each new car season makes the same broken promise. For years, my wife has spontaneously grumbled “Where’s my flying car?” as though I neglected to brew the morning java.
Nevertheless, the Cloonan entrepreneurs fearlessly set a 2020 deadline. If you Google “flying car,” you’ll find countless articles claiming automakers are thisclose to finally making it a reality. So there’s still time (two weeks or so). But there were countless articles that made the same promise 20 years ago, back when Google was just a typo of “googol” as its founders brainstormed like sixthgraders to improve upon the even worse name they used for their search engine — BackRub.
The fall of Greenwich: Some of the Stamford students’ plans for Greenwich read like the next CW crossover plot. Madeline Clapps decided California would break off from the other 49 states, but declared an even grimmer fate for Greenwich — the town runs out of money (the Democrats must have shoved through some longterm bonding in her timeline).
Tony DePreta and Ari Golub slammed Greenwich with a hurricane in 2005 that also caused the town to run out of coin. In their alternate universe, it merges with Stamford to become Grenford (Stanwich was already taken).
Madeline gave her home city a more promising future (present). She moved the White House to Stamford and had the first female president (who had been elected in 2004) teaching at Stamford University.
Saving the world: Tony Smith attributed the woeful state of 1999 to a dearth of compassion since the flame of the spirit of the 1960s had been snuffed a decade earlier. Fear not, he promised, because peace will be revived in 2020 with the return of the hippies. So start skipping those haircuts.
Making it work: On the fashion front, Carly Falkoff, Jenna Rose Gunnip, Joanna Benjamin and Christina Cartsounis took the mood ring of the ’70s in bolder directions with work clothes that shifted neon colors, (paging Lady Gaga).
Melissa Gelbart and Kathryn Callahan claimed victory in the “Project Runway” showdown. They delivered metal miniskirts, dresses made of flowers and grass (what’s more green than that?) and rebranded the Gap to the Gaz (to sound more like “galaxy”).
On the front page of the Advocate on Dec. 31, 1999, Gelbart peered through homemade 2000 goggles over a rendition of their dresses, including one with a flared bell bottom on the right leg and a high cutoff on the left.
It looks vaguely familiar ... “We were pretty spot on with that dress that didn’t cover one full leg,” she declared Friday. “Angelina Jolie basically wore that to the Oscars a couple of years ago (2012).”
Gelbert shared one reassuring detail about her class’s fate.
“Melanie (of Cyber Mall fame), Kathryn and I are actually still best friends. Go Bulldogs!”
I’m giving them another assignment for 2040: Get to work on the flying car. By then, we’ll need them to dodge tolls.