In the weeks leading up to Jan. 1, 2000, America found itself facing a crisis predicted to be like no other. When the calendar turned from Dec. 31, 1999, to Jan. 1, 2000, the world was as good as done.

Hammered by stories of dread, it was enough to get everyone in the doldrums. Planes would fall out of the skies. Computers would revert back to 1900 and we all would need abacuses to count out the weekly meal allowance.

Worse than the plague and World War II. Y2K. Doomed!

Faced with the choice of worrying to death that Chicken Little dressed as a Hewlett-Packard would fall from the sky, nearly 80,000 crammed a field in the Big Cypress Indian Reservation for a musical extravaganza. The jam band Phish, at 11 on New Year’s Eve, rode in on top of a giant hot dog. They played until after 6 in the morning.

As night slowly turned to dawn, the band wrapped up the show with a cover of the Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun” as that great orange ball of fire rose over the forest of cypress trees.

The world had not ended.

Nine years later at a global warming, err, climate change, conference in Europe, the news warned of dire consequences — DIRE — if a worldwide agreement on how to curb the earth’s warming were not hashed out in 30 days. Simultaneously the icebergs would melt, the seas would rise and we all would need oxygen masks. Hysteria. Doomed.

The sun rose the following morning.

In the spring, a preacher bought billboard advertising space across the country to announce the end of the world on May 21.

The sun rose May 22.

On Tuesday, Washington, D.C., says, the world will collapse. Without an agreement to plunge future generations several trillion dollars more into debt, the results will be catastrophic. Icebergs will melt. Chicken Little, now dressed as an iPad 3, will fall from the sky. We. Must. Borrow. More.

The crisis should be why this country already is nearly $15 trillion in debt. The crisis should be learning how to live on less or equal to the amount taken in.

Washington’s ridiculous deadline will come and go. The country will either still be nearly $15 trillion in debt, or our leaders will hand themselves $3 trillion more in credit. The hysteria created leading up to their deadline, too, will subside into the history books with the icebergs, the preacher and Y2K.

Phish has no plans for a concert on Monday night on an Indian reservation, but come Tuesday morning, at least one person will wake with a dog’s tail to the face, pour a hot cup of coffee, listen to the birds’ symphony and enjoy the sunrise.