The Roaming Twenties
Was it 2020 or 2021? I don’t know anymore. Maybe because of my propensity for correcting people, I would have said 2021. The crowd hailed the coming of 2020 as the beginning of the new decade. Mathematically, that would be wrong. That was why 2001, and not 2000, was the start of the new millennium.
But that is an analytical conclusion, and I don’t support analysis like I used to. I think gut feeling is a greater mode of observation, and if the turning of 2019 into 2020 sounds more like a big change, it doesn’t need to appeal to the loftier considerations of elementary mathematics — and that is enough for me.
However, just this once, it might be better to go with math and say that 2021 is in fact the start of the third decade of the new millennium, because when you look back on it, who the hell wants to start our present decade with 2020?