Life according to Lewis

[L]ewis Grizzard once wrote a column on how different life would be once the calendar rolled into the new millennium. The column, written in 1989, included his speculation on many issues like banks, health and air travel.
Sadly, Grizzard never saw the new millennium. I wonder what he’d think if he had.

“Somebody will have figured out by then how to make a commercial airliner go five thousand miles per hour. Of course, it will still take forty-five minutes to get the plane from its gate to its takeoff position.”

I’ve never flown, but I know plenty of people who have. I have also watched the news fairly regularly lately, which is slightly disturbing since I used to think the news was only for old people, and there been several stories on airplanes. I haven’t heard any stories of people flying at 5,000 miles per hour yet, but I have heard horror tales of passengers who enter the airport with an infant and board the plane with a toddler after finally making it through security scans and flight delays.

“It will have been determined that heavy exercise, like jogging and aerobics, causes flat feet, hepatitis, and acne.”

This is exactly the reason I made the decision not to exercise, and I bet the decision is exactly the reason I have fat stomach, shortness of breath and bad knees. Here we are in 2011, and so far just about the only things they’ve determined are everything good causes cancer and everyone should cover their entire bodies with two coats of sunscreen each and every time they dare to venture outdoors.

“McDonald’s will be selling goat sandwiches.”

It might as well be. The state of the fast-food industry has taken a hit this year thanks to Taco Bell’s alleged corner-cutting, which led us to wonder if beef may not really be what’s for dinner. As for McDonald’s, it continues to play with our emotions and appetites, refusing to make up its mind about what to do with the famed McRib. It has taken away its Super Size menu, which was extremely frustrating since the menu is not what makes people fat. Their decision to eat from it made them fat. No one takes responsibility for themselves anymore, and now I get less fries because of it. It is also phasing out Ronald McDonald and replacing him with coffee, which might be a bad idea. McDonald’s isn’t serving goat, but it sure has been a scapegoat.

“The federal deficit will be so large by then, we will have to sell off North Dakota, Montana, and that silly-looking top part of Idaho to the Canadians.”

The federal deficit is so large by now, we will probably have to invent a new number just to tell people what it actually is. It’s terrible. We still have all those states, including the top of Idaho, but if we have to sell them I bet they’ll belong to China. We’re probably in tremendous debt to the Chinese, since they’ve been making pretty much all of our stuff for years. The price of gas is so ludicrous I don’t want to talk about it but the moose population continues to thrive because we’d rather buy somebody else’s oil instead of drilling our own, thus steadily adding to the deficit. Maybe we should consider selling some of the moose to Canada.

“Elvis will still be dead.”

Sadly, as far as I know, he still is. There are, however, still enough of his impersonators to make up a small nation.

“So will the Atlanta Falcons.”

The Birds made the playoffs last season, but laid an egg against the eventual Super-Bowl-winning Packers. As I type this, I am watching an update on the impending NFL lockout. The Falcons might be dead next season, but so will the rest of the league.

The world has changed since Grizzard’s prose last graced the pages of papers. Some of those changes have been good, others have been less than desirable. Grizzard, who was widely known for his love of the South, once said, “God talks like we do.”

Maybe it’s time we started listening.