Tens

Now that we've passed the date on the 2010 calendar that read October 10 we can rejoice in the knowledge that there's only two more dates this century where some people will get all excited about the coincidence of the number of days into the month matching the number of months into the year and the number of years into the century. Twenty-six months from today we'll have the last such date (December 12, 2012, or as it will be touted, 12/12/12) until January 1, 2101.

If humanity is still around then, I'm sure the novelty of that date will make it equally popular as the matching day-month-year days have been (and will continue to be) for the first dozen years of this century to schedule weddings (especially if it falls on a weekend).

If our species does not make it until that point and aliens land to review what's left of our civilization, allow me to explain why this arbitrary aspect of our means of marking the passage of time struck a certain portion of the population as being a more prized day to schedule an event.


On the surface it seems we were a superstitious lot, and certainly that would be a sufficient explanation for some, but that's not really it. There are those who believed in the power of numerology—and hey, if that worked for them while we were still around, good for them—but the main benefit those people got from such dates seemed to be that someone at every news organization would call upon them to pad out some human interest story that ran on the nightly program to appease those who fancy the matching numbers held some supernatural influence.

However, really what spurred the desire of couples to wed on such dates was mostly that it made for a quaint conversation piece. Yes, one would think that a special occasion like the celebration of one's love would be good enough as a topic for conversation in and of itself, but the reality was that, as a civilization, we weren't that good at filling the time when we couldn't think of something else to say about the weather, and had to concoct gimmicks like this.

That's almost certainly why we spent so much time watching crazy wedding dances from other peoples' weddings on YouTube. That sort of stunt was for the extroverted who couldn't secure a decent place for the reception on the matching-numbers date, and had to fall back on something involving lots of rehearsal.

We were quite industrious when we had to be.

However, if we're not still around, it's likely that coming up with ways for stuff to seem interesting after 2012 was our undoing.