Maybe I’m alone in this but I just have to say that I really struggle with how to say “2012.”  I know that might sound weird (as do most of the things I muse about!) but it’s not as simple as it looks.  I mean I can say “two thousand twelve” (not “two thousand and twelve” which is totally wrong grammatically speaking and kinda makes me crazy! Especially when supposedly educated people say it that way!) but I’m talking about when I need to abbreviate it as in when I am telling the person on the other end of the phone the expiration date of my credit card.  It is downright tedious to say “two thousand twelve” in that situation (and just wait until 2013 when we have to add a syllable!).

It is also incongruous (which also drives those of us with any kind of OCD tendencies!) to say “two thousand twelve” when the month of expiration falls in the single digit category.  You wouldn’t, for example, say “oh-six two-thousand-twelve” because you’re mixing your formats!  So what does one do?

To maintain some congruity you might say “oh-six-twelve” but that doesn’t seem to separate the two numbers by the appropriate forward slash (/) and feels like there is a syllable missing.  But then it seems too long and tedious to say “June, two-thousand-twelve” and perhaps even a bit formal. And “six twelve” sounds too much like an address and perhaps would throw the person off with the result of you having to repeat the date in another format anyway which defeats the goal of brevity in these situations.

And it isn’t just brevity.  I feel somewhat judged by how well the date of expiration slides off the tongue, as though the other will think less of me if I somehow say it wrong (do you think I have a complex?!).

Ah, me.  I long for the old days, in the good old 20th century when one might say easily, “oh-six ninety-eight.” For some reason that just seemed to flow better.  Or my birth date, “three-thirty-one-fifty-eight.”  Now those are some numbers that just sound musical in their simplicity.  Not so much my grandson’s birth date: “eighteen-ten”??  I could see people looking quizzically at me as if they thought I was nuts in pronouncing that my grandson was born in the early years of the 19th century!

It’s the little things…