We Totally Forgot About You, 2011

2010, cutting-edge yet boxy and comforting, you are a German-built year. Arthur C. Clarke dreamt of you in 1982 as the next-most-obvious target for a future within the reach of a middle-aged person's lifetime but draped in cold-war unpredictability. Still, without doubt, the computer would be struggling with self-consciousness, and the nation state would have outposts in the solar system. There would be councils of world government, anachronistically based on King Arthur's Round Table. Long in advance, you tidily marked census projections and government documents. Cities vied to host your World Cup.

2012, you are destined for great things. The Maya constructed the Long Count calendar to measure astronomical time over so many generations, and now the end of the 13th Mayan b'ak'tun cycle will come on December 21, 2012 — an event, apparently, of no particular significance to modern Maya, but since the 1960s, a subject of debate to Maya scholars and later to New Age astrologists. Some say you augur a final cataclysm or, perhaps, the beginning of enlightenment. We are all eager to hear the ways that newscasters will butcher the word "b'ak'tun." Will you spell the end of the world or merely the last year of the Bush-era tax rates? I cannot say, although I know cities have vied to host your World Cup.

2011, I'm desperately sorry. No one ever thought of you. Take solace with 2013. Who knows? Maybe you are on the Hopi calendar. Perhaps some corner of the world will notice that cities vied to host your FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup.