This is a column in which the guy in the mugshot looks into the future. He’ll also glance into the past and the present, as well as forward, backward, up, down, upside down and sideways (and under the bed!) in an effort to bring you, well, some fearless dumb predictions.
First, the easy ones: Another 88 boozillion people will move to Bryan County in 2022 and continue to do so over the entire decade.
They’ll also move to every other county in the Coastal Empire, thereby making this place even more fun to live in if you drive, shop, work or go outside for some fresh air.
This is known in Pooler-ese as progress. On a down note, if you have a pony you won’t be able to ride him for all the other new ponies out there taking up the good pony grass.
But there’ll be places on Facebook where you can fuss about not having a place to ride your pony, ESPECIALLY SINCE YOU MOVED HERE SPECIFICALLY TO RIDE A PONY.
These are online pages you can debate with other folks well versed in knowing everything about everything, including what local leaders are doing wrong and how they’re always trampling your pony-riding rights through their adherence to the muck and mire of the local good old boy system and it’s silly rules about ponies.
The massive loop-de-loop being constructed at the I-95 and I-16 interchange will likely be a lot closer to completion in 2022 or 2023. Whatever the case, upon completion it’s a good bet cars will be flying off in all directions. The upscale cars will be those from South Bryan. Many will wind up in the Ogeechee River. So many, in fact, they’ll form a bizarre metal, rubber and plastic reef, which will in turn be converted into waterfront apartments by developers from Ohio. They’ll call it Buckeye Banks! See the Ogeechee from Inside and Underneath! Coastal South Ohio Living at its Finest! Don’t eat the fish! They’re pets! And radioactive!
Pleasingly plump balding weekly newspaper editors with stumpy legs, squeaky voices and hairy ears will become cool in 2022, and spend most of the year with slinky supermodels draped about our arms and necks. Don’t tell our wives.
Someone will go fly a kite in 2022. On purpose. It will get eaten by a drone flown by some bored middle schooler with tattoos named Wolfgang Von Bat Whacker.
Someone will do someone a good turn, and immediately write up a press release and send it out for publication. What use is doing good unto others if you can’t get some free advertising out of it?
Some lazy jerk will leave their buggy in the middle of a parking spot in your favorite supermarket’s parking lot because he’s too self-centered or out of shape to put it where it belongs. If it dents somebody’s else’s vehicle or causes some little old lady on a fixed income to have to park on the back 40 and walk a mile in the rain, who cares? Not the lazy jerk.
It will rain on somebody’s parade. Probably a parade for weekly newspaper editors, if they ever had a parade, which isn’t likely.
The new $97 million Richmond Hill High School will not open in 2022 as it is not scheduled to open until 2024, maybe. It’s a huge school, so it’s going to take a while to build. But when it’s finished, it’s going to be the biggest school on the east coast. It might even cause Bryan County to sink into the Atlantic, or at least put a big dent in the ground and let loose a tribe of underground humanoid flying cannibals with fangs. Uh-oh.
The state of Georgia will work out a white trash exchange program with the states of Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania and Michigan in which we’ll send them those recently convicted of meth offenses to help counterbalance the number of sketchy looking people from up north who show up at I-95 interchanges driving rusty Crown Vics held together by Salt Life stickers so they can cadge change from passersby for cigarettes and energy ripple.
The editor of the Bryan County News will be even more bewildered, befuddled and begoogled in 2022. And he, meaning me, wishes the same for you. Thanks for reading, and for not coming by my house and shooting my porch lights out.