I say we all treat ourselves to a little something special today in honor of the once-in-a-lifetime occasion marked by this date. What occasion, you ask?
Why, this could be the last warm day of the millennium. And it’s certainly the last first Friday in November of the millennium. So let’s raise a toast, shed a tear and knock off work early, for never again in this millennium will we live through this particular confluence of events.
I have been using variations on the “last warm day of the millennium” theme for several weeks now.
“Can we work on this project this weekend?” a friend said the other day.
“Sorry, can’t. Gotta be outside. Could be the last warm weekend of the millennium.”
As the millennium trickles down to its last few weeks, everything can be elevated to a millennial finale. If you’re looking for excuses to do what you shouldn’t, or to avoid what you should, or if you want to impart deep meaning to the mundane, simply tell yourself, “This will be the last time I do this in this millennium.”
That ordinary game of November golf? Could be the last golf game of the millennium, which obviously calls for an extra round of beer afterward.
That shoe sale at Marshall Field’s? Could be the last one of this thousand years, so buy an extra pair.
Writing out that mortgage check for a choking sum can seem downright nostalgic if you think, “This the last time in this millennium I’ll make a mortgage payment.” If you forget to write that check on time, as usual, you can make vice sound like a vow by thinking, “This is the last time in this millennium I’ll pay my mortgage late.”
Under ordinary circumstances, “millennium” is the most boring word in the English language. When I see it in a headline, I promptly start to nap, which means I am extremely rested lately.
Only a couple of years ago, the average American had rarely heard the word milenium and only three people worldwide would have realized that the preceding spelling of the word is wrong. While the latter is still true, the word is now as unavoidable as photos of Ricky Martin.
“The last World Series of the millennium,” I heard someone say after the World Series. So what? So it makes the World Series sound like a whole lot more than baseball, which is the principle we ordinary people can invoke in creating our own millennial finales.
Man, the millennium is almost over. I’d better squeeze in one last day of hooky.
This could be the last day of the millennium I eat two bags of M&Ms.
I am not cleaning my bathtub one more time in this millennium!
Used in this way, “millennium” becomes fun to say. It gives weight and sonority to this orgy of finales. Little things–your last Halloween costume of the millennium!–never seemed so major. Vices and excuses never seemed so urgent or profound.
The last-of-the-millennium approach is particularly useful for the holidays.
Ordinarily on Thanksgiving, for example, you try not to eat a year’s worth of calories in a sitting. But this is the last Thanksgiving of the millennium, so help yourself to more dressing and grab that gravy boat again.
This will also be the last Christmas of the millennium, a particularly cheerful occurrence. It guarantees that this will be the last time between A.D. 1000 and A.D. 2000 that you wait until Dec. 26 to send your Christmas cards. It will be the last Christmas of the millennium you spend more than you should, drink more than you should, spend more on airfare than you should and wonder what you’re going to do with those gifts you have absolutely no use for.
The end of the millennium also affords the best reason to procrastinate in a thousand years.
I know a man who plans to write a book. He has been planning this for quite a while and could start at any time. But why bother now?
“This is a project for the new millennium,” he says. “The next seven weeks are for endings, not beginnings.”
Why begin anything in the old millennium that you could more poetically begin in the next? Books, diets, good habits of all kinds are best left for the fresh start of the next thousand years. For the rest of this millennium, do whatever feels good. Once in a millennium couldn’t hurt.
