Sometimes, when life gets me down, I like to think about the future to cheer myself up.

In the future, everything will be so much better than it is now; it will be so great that we’ll never be able to imagine a time when people actually lived the way we do right now.

There will be flying cars, robot dogs, invisibility helmets and remote control socks. Imagine that! Remote control socks!

You’d never have to bend down to put on your socks ever again. Yep, that’s exactly how it’s going to be in the future.

You may be wondering how the future could possibly cheer me up, considering how much the world sucks right now.

Well, I’ll tell you.

“ There will be flying cars, robot dogs, invisibility helmets and remote control socks. Imagine that! Remote control socks!

When I get really old and cranky and I see all the young whippersnappers around me with lives that are so much better than the one I had, I will turn into what I’ve always known deep in my heart I would be: one of those old guys who complains all the time about how easy kids have it “these days.”

Becoming an old, crotchety man will be the coolest thing in the world.

I will tell all the kids about how tough I had things growing up. I’ll stand around in malls (or maybe flying malls, or robot 7-Elevens), and tell stories about how, when I was growing up, electric butter hadn’t even been invented, or how my family was so poor we didn’t even have our own British robot butler/pleasurebot.

After I run out of stuff to complain about from my actual life, I’ll just start making shit up: “When I was a kid, my family was so poor, we couldn’t afford feet. I’d walk around all day on my two bloody stumps and cry every time I passed a shoe store.”

When that gets boring, I’ll dive into the real reason I can’t wait to be an old man.

I can’t wait to shamelessly make fun of the younger generations for having to suffer the consequences of what we are currently doing to their future home.

I’ll tell the kids to gather ‘round and I’ll say: “When I was young, we didn’t have the luxury of all this wonderful smog – if we wanted to see real smog we would have had to go all the way to Mexico City or New Delhi.”

Or, how about: “You kids have it so easy these days with your store-bought air and your SPF 4,500. We couldn’t even get SPF 4,500 when I was a kid.”

As much as I’d love to see this day come, I know it’s only a dream.

We all know the world’s going to end at the end of next year. Thanks a lot, Nostradamus!

These were examples of J. Williamez’s daydreams. You should hear his nightmares.

Published in Volume 65, Number 19 of The Uniter (February 10, 2011)