Mom Saves Son's 2016 Predictions, Returns it on His Birthday 20 Years Later

When Christopher Janitz of Wallington, New Jersey turned 29 this week, his mother gave him a very special present: a school assignment from 20 years ago in which he predicted what the year 2016 would be like.

“She said, ‘This is something I've been hanging on to for the past 20 years,’” Janitz told ABC News. “If I can remember correctly, I wrote this for an assignment when I was in third grade. I remember over the years thinking about this letter whenever someone would bring up the conversation about what the future would be like. But I definitely never thought I would see it again!”

"Great Scott!" Christopher Janitz, 29, was impressed by the predictions his third grade self made 20 years ago. (Image source: IMDB.com)

And 9-year-old Janitz made some pretty adorable, though mostly wrong predictions about the future:

Twenty years from today it will be 2016 and there will not be cars that ride on the ground. The cars will float in the air. The schools won’t be made from blocks of stone. They will be made from metal and they will be in funny looking shapes. There will be robot policemen and cashiers and other kinds of people. There won’t be normal desks. The desks will be like a computer with weird kinds of pencils. In the (year) 2016 I’ll be 29-years-old and my sister will be 32-years-old and my mom will be 63-years-old. Twenty years from today the New York Giants will win the Super Bowl and the Dallas Cowboys will never win the Super Bowl again in NFL history.

But what seemed like the extravagant imaginings of a naïve kid are actually not that far from reality, depending on who you ask.

Image via Facebook/Chris Janitz

“I’m most surprised at how some of the ideas I had as a kid ended up coming true,” Janitz explained. “We have automated or ‘robot’ cashiers when you head to the grocery store and do self-checkout. I’m a designer who works on a computer all day and owns an iPad with a stylus, so that little bit came true, too!”

What Janitz called the “most surprising” prediction of all was his football forecast.

“I wrote the letter right after [the Dallas Cowboys] won their last Super Bowl. Since then, my Giants have gone on to win two Super Bowls. The Cowboys? Nothing,” he boasted. “The 9-year-old me would be thrilled!”

Janitz had no idea that his mom had held onto his time capsule project for so long, but looking back, he was thankful she did.

“After giving it to me, she told me that she had kept it in a drawer hidden away,” he said. “She would take it out every now and then and read it to put a smile on her face. I love my mom to no end, and am so grateful for her to have kept something like this so close to her. I don’t think she’ll have any idea how much it means to me.”

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(H/T: ABC News)