I celebrated Christmas just a few weeks ago. Well, not really. But when I climbed into my 2008 Honda CRV (aka Bessie), it was December 25, 2004! I had a moment when I had this overwhelming feeling that I had failed to do my Christmas shopping. But in truth, it was August 2024!

On or about January 3, 2022, I had just gotten in the car to run an errand and saw the clock and date on the dashboard, but thought, “Hey, I know how to res-set that. I’ll do it when I get back home from my errand.” But alas it was not to be.

Many of you remember Y2K—January 1, 2000. Were we prepared for a new decade? Of course. But were our computer-driven devices ready? We didn’t know if we were or not. So many things, so much technology could fail us. According to Wikipedia, the definition of Y2K was all about whether computer errors related to the formatting and storage of calendar data for dates in and after the year 2000. Many programs represented four-digit years with only the final two digits, making the year 2000 indistinguishable from 1900.

We weren’t sure if the banks could function, so we were advised to have cash on hand. There was doubt about whether computers would function at all. Think about all the daily tasks we do each day using computers—checking out at the grocery store for example. Could we fuel our vehicles if Y2K computer errors affected that? We even have a “crank” radio as a leftover of the preparations for Y2K. It is calculated that the United States spent an estimated $134 billion in preparation for January 1, 2000.

So back to Bessie. You see, on New Year’s Day, 2022, the Y2K bug reared its head and the digital clocks in the older model Hondas and Acuras encountered a bug that reset the clocks back 20 years to January 1, 2002, at 4:00 PM EST. Didn’t Honda engineers see this coming? And shouldn’t they have been able to overcome the “bug” and fix the problem. Evidently that’s a hard “No” to both questions.

After repeated efforts to correct Bessie’s calendar and time, I called Honda. It was not easy to find contact information, but I finally got an answer, left my name and number and this lady called back. She seemed to be as confused about the computer glitch as I was. She said the engineers were working to find a solution to restore the time and date on these vehicles. But that never happened.

We take many things for granted. Think about your cell phone. We expect to set an alarm, and it will wake us up. We expect to check email, send text messages, get on Instagram, and dozens of other activities just on our phone. Think now about all the other ways in which our world functions through computer applications. Scary how it could all come tumbling down if all the tech people and now AI don’t get it right.

I was able to re-set the clock in my Honda CRV after much trial and error and reading lots of different fixes on the internet. So, the time in my Bessie is correct, but the date today on the day of publication of this article is January 12, 2005. And that’s how I celebrated Christmas just a few weeks ago! But only for an instant . . . (smile)!