2010-THE FUTURE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Remember 1987? I do. I was reminded of it last weekend when I unearthed a relic of that year in my garage--A like-new JC Penney brand color TV! (Not just ANY color TV, an ALL CHANNEL UHF/VHF TV!) There's this button that says "AUTO COLOR" near the bottom, which simply changes it from a black/white to color TV! I laughed when I thought of how I would have KILLED to have a TV in my room like this when I was 10!

What were you doing in 1987?

(Think... really, THINK!)

At this point Margie is thinking, "I was in the 7th grade...I'd be dating a 3rd grader if we were together back then." Heh heh heh! Of course, I'd have been bragging to all my Garbage-Pail-Kid card-trading friends that my girlfriend was already well into puberty.

Ah, 1987! That was the year we got our nintendo and stayed up all night playing Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt. That's what came with the game system. A new gaming system today does a lot more and costs about the same after adjusting for inflation. Get this: In 1987, gas was 98 cents a gallon, stamps were 22 cents, minimum wage was $3.35/hr, and Starship's No One's Gonna Stop Us Now was blasting through someone's "boom-box" that had a TV on it that couldn't pickup anything. You could still watch Family Ties on TV, and Jenga and PogoBall were the hot new toys to stick under your tree. I remember getting one of those neon NASH skateboards, which was like a sled with wheels. So we would just practice riding it in a straight line and ramping over something. I never did get a SWATCH watch, let alone 3 or 4 of them I could wear at the same time.

Here we are--really no different than we were back in 87! Until you look at the amount of change in the last 23 years versus the prior decades. 1987 is to 2010 as 1964 was to 1987. Some of the changes are only superficial. (We do the same things only the toys are alot better. 1964 was the year of LBJ, Mary Poppins, The Beatles-I Wanna Hold Your Hand, Andy Griffith and Easy Bake Oven!)

But back then we really thought we had something. If you had asked anybody in 1987 what 2010 would be like and youda gotten some outlandish Star Trek-ish description complete with flying cars and teleporting devices...and don't forget lasers! I'm laughing now thinking about a video I watched (probably on reel to reel) in the 1st grade that depicted life in the future as people living in capsules and getting all their dietary needs met by little pills instead of real food. (How off base was that! I mean we live in huge houses with 12 foot ceilings and the average meal at Burger King is enough food for 4 people if you Biggie Size it, or whatever they have. We think we need a Hum-V just to take our kids to school and dance class!)

Maybe I'm just getting old. Even my 1-year-old knows how good life can be in 2010, and her experiences today will one day be yesterday's bygone attempt at technology. She can't even TALK yet, and she already walks around the house with a block over her ear jabbering like she's commisserating about a diaper rash. One day, she'll look at my iPhone and laugh. "You mean you actually had to touch the screen," she'll say. About CD's, she'll ask "What did you use these shiney discs for?" And my personal favorite "I can't believe you actually had a computer in your house, instead of hosted on the web!"

I don't think flying cars and capsule gobling spock-ish futurians are what we have to look forward to in the next decade. I think we'll look and act virtually the same, but with an even better grasp on technology, science and medicine. Okay, so here are a few strange predictions for 2020:

1. People will talk 20% faster on average, due to the barage of information available and also the urgency of their days.

2. Fossil fuels will give way to hydrogen, propane and electricity as our main source of energy (or at least 50/50), but global warming theories will lose popularity as we begin to plot climate cycles that fluctuate over centuries at a time.

3. Conventional telephone and print ad usage will drop by 60% as we become increasingly wireless and digital!

4. Computers (CPU's) will become obsolete, as web-hosting gains footing in household usage. (Plug your tv or monitor into a recepticle and get all the software, datastorage and entertainment you want for one monthly fee).

5. No more paper and pencil in school. Kids will use touch sensetive tablets to do their assignments, and will wi fi connect to upload to the teachers' station. Conventional schools will become less frequent, replaced largely by digital environments and self-teaching computer based formats. This will cut teaching staff in half or more in some states.

6. Aging childred will have to undergo special surgery due to pain and joint stiffness caused by excessive use of video game controllers.

7. A human will live to see 130, and health insurance costs will go down as carcinogens are blocked and deadly diseases are managed or cured.

8. Space exploration will be cut due to it's expense and futility. A few unmanned crafts will still go up for maintenance, defense and weather, but no more astronaut crews, shuttles, etc...

9. The evergrowing explicit entertainment industry will be shunned by many, as a movement away from degenerate behavior, immorality and the like will erupt from the Christian church and other "civilized" organizations.

10. Large families will become less and less common. Government will encourage and even incentivize smaller families with tax credits and caps on financial aid, welfare and health care. Watch for government subsidies on abortion and euthanasia as well.

That's it for now! Chime in if you have your own predictions for 2020.