Today's award goes to the Central School in Tierp, Sweden. The Local reports:
Anna Eriksson, 105, lives in a nursing home near Tierp in eastern Sweden, about 130 kilometres north of Stockholm.
But the Swede's three-digit age didn't stand in the way of her receiving a letter recently from the Central School in Tierp, letting her know the school had a spot for her in a class of children due to turn six next year.
The school's principal, Marinna Eriksson (no relation) confirmed ... that Anna had received the letter, as had more than 60 other local children.
"The addresses for everyone born in '07 were included in complete lists we received from the population registry," Marianna Eriksson told UNT.
When the labels were placed on the letters, however, no one happened to notice that one was addressed to the nursing home of Anna Eriksson, who is also born in '07 – 1907, that is.
"Her daughter got in touch and she and I both thought it was pretty funny. The two of them and I could see the humour in what happened," the principal said.
There's more at the link.
I hope she arrives on the first day of school, waving her letter! I'm sure the other kids would be giggling fit to beat the band . . .
Peter
Let me guess, in Swedish "Tierp"' is pronounced "Derp", right?
ReplyDeleteThe Y2K problem at its worst!
ReplyDeleteI think it's cute. We have forgotten about Y2K, and those accompanying glitches. The older we get, the more fun school becomes. I, too, hope she goes.
ReplyDeleteWow. People still use 2 digit years in computer programs?
ReplyDeleteActually, it's not the schools fault. They just requested a list of school age children in their area from the population registry, which is a centralized government registry of all citizens in sweden.
ReplyDeleteThey don't have that kind of registry themselves, in fact it would be illegal for them to keep a register on people that are not yet students at the school.
People in Sweden are identified with a Personal Number, which is assigned at birth and follow them all their lifes. Basically the same as a SSN, but it cant be changed and it's used more or less everywhere in Swedish society.
The PN is a 10 digit number, of the format YYMMDD-XXXX, with the four last being a sequence number and a control digit (it used to be based on place of birth, but I think they've changed that now).
So yes, it has a 2 digit year in it, when they implemented it in the 1950's they didn't think that far ahead of how it would be used in computers decades later.
Instead, they solved the 100 year issue by deciding that the "-" should be replaced with a "+" when a person turns 100.
This obviously doesn't work as well as you would hope, because stories like this is not uncommon, there seems to be a few stories every year.