Folks:

Jeanette Thomas has brought up an excellent topic in the Kids/Education category that will prove to be crucial to the historic aspect of the Y2K experience. History revolving around Y2K will be written when our children are adults. They will write their memories from the perspectives of children, which may indeed flavor the view of things!

Therefore, I would like to encourage everybody that comes through this thread to take a minute and record their kids' reactions to pre- and post-rollover events (and non-events, as the case may be).

My personal experience was that the Bunker children (girls ages 14 and 16) were nervous yet excited. They asked me repeatedly, and with some intrepedation about what to expect, having already run the gammit of the possibilites in their own imaginations. Of course, I could only answer, "I don't know, but we'll be prepared for whatever comes." They watched their mother build an impressive food storage and bring home new gadgets such as water purifiers and solar panels.

They were impacted enormously by my changed behavior, attitudes, and influence within my state re: preparedness issues. Do I dare say... they even thought about their own "future" in a way that teenagers are generally not known to do? They never felt afraid, just "ready."

Or, it could be that the only thing they'll really remember is that the day that mom finally brought some some "good food", it went into food storage and they could only stand and gawk at it?

What will our "children" report about Y2K 50 years from now? What are your children saying now? Please put it down for history.

Special thanks to the wonderful Jeanette Thomas (Y2Kids) for tirelessly keeping kids' Y2K voices alive.

-- Jennifer Bunker (Salt Lake City, Utah) (jen@bunkergroup.com), January 02, 2000

Answers

We had a Y2K party at our house. My 11 year daughter's only comments after the "ordeal" were: "Everyone got sick because they ate too much"...

Hope that helps!

- Steve Eaton Graham WA

-- Steve Eaton (chron2714@juno.com), January 03, 2000.

Well, in his autobiography, Polish mathematician Stanislaw Ulam described going to a relative's house during WWI because it was in a neighborhood thought safer from shelling. He says that while the adults were probably terrified, he actually enjoyed being with all those relatives. "Wartime memories," he noted, "are not always traumatic."

-- Matthew D. Healy (mdhealy@sprynet.com), January 04, 2000.