“Are you sure you won’t join us?” Suzanne asked, pulling the curtains closed in my living room.  “It should be quite the blowout.”      “Do I want to spent New Year’s Eve down by San Francisco Bay,” I said, “freezing my butt off in the company of two hundred to five hundred thousand of my closest friends, most of whom I’ve never met?  Do I want to stand down there in a fenced-off area, holding my breath that the Y2K bug doesn’t turn out all the lights, and hoping that the guy I’m standing next to isn’t some Algerian terrorist planning to make this a weekend I’ll never forget?      “Hmmm. Tough question.”      I gave her my best “Puh-lease” look.      “No, I think I’m going to just stay here where it’s toasty and warm.  I’ll watch a couple movies, read this new Peanuts collection,...  Maybe I’ll think up a New Year’s Resolution or two.”      “Okay,” she said, kissing me good night.  “I still say you’re missing out.”      A few hours later, after enjoying Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein — Madeleine Kahn was fantastic, wasn’t she? — I noticed that it was just a few minutes until midnight.  Time passes quickly when you’re doing nothing in particular.      I watched the last few seconds tick away.  And nothing happened, of course.      “Y2K, my—”      Then the power went out.      “—butt.”      Okay, so maybe I (and lots of other people) underestimated things a bit.  I felt my way into the kitchen and scrambled around to find the drawer where I kept the flashlight.  It turned on, flickered a couple times, and faded quickly to useless dimness.  I could have sworn I just put new batteries in it.  Should have used Energizer.      Candles, then.  Where do I have candles?  (And matches!)  Up in one of the cupboards?  You never realize how hard it is to find something until you do it in the dark, but I found one and got it lit.      As I headed back into the living room, I heard a yelp from out in the hallway, followed by several loud thumps.      “That sounded like Avery,” I said.  Living at the top of the stairs, Avery could be in danger of slipping on them in the dark, and he’s on the fourth floor.      I hurried to the door, but I never expected what I found.  I bobbled the candle in shock, spilling hot wax on the carpet. “Happy New Year!”      Standing in the darkened hall outside my apartment were Suzanne, Avery, my neighbors Ron and Val, Tam, Tycho, and Sam-n-Sam from downstairs, and Grace, who lives in the basement.  Ron had a Polaroid camera, and a minute later he was able to hand me my own shocked expression.      “What are you all doing here?”      “We’re here to drag you out of your apartment,” Tam said.  “You will celebrate New Year’s Eve.”      “It’s a bit late for that, don’t you think?” I asked.      “No,” said Suzanne, with a smirk.  “Not if I set all your clocks ahead by an hour.  Yes, even your watch.  And I closed your curtains to keep you from noticing that all the other lights in the City were still on after we cut the power to your apartment.      “You can turn it back on now, Grace,” she said.  Grace pointed a remote control of some sort down the stairwell, and my lights came back.      “I even gave Suzanne some dead batteries to put in your flashlight,” Val said.      “So now are you going to come celebrate with us?” Avery asked.  “Or do we have to get tough with you?” Best wishes for the next millennium (that is, the period of 1000 years that all start with the digit “2”, not anything dated from the alleged birth of Christ) from Marc Lynx and all the “Missing Lynx” characters.   Click here to return to the main Signature Quotes page Click here to return to the main Missing Lynx page
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