The Y2K “Catastrophe” and My Fear

The Y2K “Catastrophe” and My Fear

          On December 31, 1999, almost every computer owner in the world panicked. Why? They believed that the shifting of the first two digits of the year would confuse the computers and make them crash. This belief had existed ever since computers were programmed, and to stop people’s fear, I would have tried to convince them that their computers wouldn’t crash just because of having to change two digits. As for me, this reminds me of the time when I was really scared of something but ended up liking it: a steep amusement park ride.

          When the shift to the year 2000 came, people feared that the change from _ _99 to _ _00 would confuse computers and crash them. Most people probably thought the ascending order of the last two digits would be “disrupted” and make the computers think the date is “19100,” “1900,” or other years. Even the government was afraid. However, I would have told them that changing two digits wouldn’t cause a major glitch. If it did, why didn’t the glitch happen when the new decade came after the dates were programmed on the computers, such as 1950? Even if they were such a big deal, why not look at the places with earlier time zones, such as Australia? The actual result was that some computers mixed up the date and minor glitches did happen, but there wasn’t a catastrophe.

          As for me, I once was scared of an amusement park ride. Several years ago, my family went to an amusement park called Canobie Lake Park in Massachusetts. There was a water ride in which people go in a log-shaped car and it goes up to a high point and from there, it drops down extremely fast to the water below.  As I was waiting in line, I didn’t want to go on the ride, but my friend Charlie kept telling me that I could and should do it. I looked at each car going down and thought that it looked really frightening and some people even screamed their head off. I was sweating as our turn was getting closer and closer. Finally, it was our turn to get on the ride. We got on and the shaky ascent started. When we got to the top, I was feeling queasy as to what would happen: what if the car fell off to a lake nearby? What if the water at the bottom would be so strong it would hurt us? However, Charlie encouraged me not to be afraid during the whole ride. It helped me a lot. As the car started its deep ascent, I felt as if I was going to throw up. It turned out to be fantastic! I enjoyed it so much that I rode it again and again. Actually, the subsequent rides were even more fun since I wasn’t so worried anymore.

In the end, both Y2K and my fear weren’t such big problems. From my experience, I learned an important lesson: never be scared to try new things. We all should not be frightened of things but try to conquer them.