Born in 2000

If you were born in 2000, you arrived at the start of a new millennium that the computers had decided not to destroy. The dot-com bubble was still inflating in January, fortunes being made on business plans written on napkins, pets.com advertising during the Super Bowl—though it would all come apart by April, the NASDAQ losing seventy-eight percent of its value and deleting a generation of tech fortunes.

George W. Bush and Al Gore fought the most contested presidential election in modern history, the outcome hanging on Florida for thirty-six days before the Supreme Court ended the recount and Bush became president by 537 votes and the shadow of legitimacy. *Gladiator* and *Cast Away* and *Almost Famous* were at the theater.

Eminem's *The Marshall Mathers LP* was the most-discussed album of the year. The first Big Brother premiered in the US and reality TV announced itself as television's new dominant genre. Tiger Woods won three of the four major golf championships and was already clearly not of the same species as other golfers.

*The West Wing* and *Survivor* were the TV events. A gallon of gas cost $1.47.

The internet was everywhere but the wireless revolution hadn't quite arrived—you were still tethered to your modem. The country was prosperous and peaceful and about to discover, in the most devastating way, that those conditions were not guarantees.