Tonight I'm gonna party like it's One Thousand Nine Hundred Ninety-Nine

Ever have something that annoys you and won't go away? My annoyance comes when people tell me what annoys them, because it sticks in my head. Ever since the 1990s some people have claimed that the 21st Century didn't really start until January 1, 2001. That's because numbers go 1-10, as should decades. Ah, baloney. When the calendar rolled over to January 1, 2000, we all claimed it as the new millennium. So, people who claim the 2001 start to the millennium may be technically right, but they're still annoying.

So now we have people who are telling us that we shouldn't call 2010 Two Thousand Ten, we should call it Twenty Ten. As annoying as those people are, I tend to agree with them, so I'm being annoying, too.

We never said One Thousand Nine Hundred Ninety-Nine for 1999, or for any year in the Twentieth Century. Or Nineteenth, Eighteenth...on down the list to Nine Ninety-Nine. I'll bet they said Year One Thousand for 1000 A.D., or maybe even Y1K!

Years ago we started calling 2000 "The Year Two Thousand," because there was no way to say "The Year Twenty Hundred" in English without it sounding awkward and wrong. We stuck with that "Two Thousand and. . ." during the decade just past. But now we have a chance to start saying it correctly. Twenty Ten.

Twenty Ten. Next year Twenty Eleven. Then Twenty Twelve. Say it folks, Twenty Ten. You know I'm right. Annoying, but right.