I’ve never met those two extraordinarily wise entities, Yuda and Ida. I don’t know if they’re male, female, young, old, or even if they hail from this world. But for ease of conversation, I’ll tag them in the masculine.

Yuda and Ida can’t be younger than any of us. They’ve been around — at the very least — ever since folks started trying to predict the future.

For example, I’ve been semi-retired since the first day of June 2008. Over those 16 months my back yard has sprouted 10 bird feeders, two hummingbird feeders, three bird baths and a stone bench. I’ve gained more satisfaction watching house finches, songbirds, woodpeckers and occasional hawks, chubby-cheeked chipmunks and omnipresent gray squirrels, than I ever would have imagined in the days of my youth.

But Yuda and Ida apparently knew it. Just the other day, cleaning a bird bath, I heard myself say out loud:

"If Yuda told me that one day when I was old and fat I’d enjoy cleaning bird baths, Ida said you’re crazy."

My wife’s dog was right there in full view, fortunately, because my next door neighbor’s yard guy was within earshot.

"It’s OK to talk out loud," he called to me, "but just don’t be answering yourself back."

I told him that’s why I keep my wife’s dog around, so I can at least claim to be talking to someone else.

Then I got to thinking about those guys, Yuda and Ida. How did they come to know me, and everyone else, so well? About things that will happen in the future, things that most of us would never fathom in even our wildest imaginings?

For example, who in the 1950’s would have envisioned e-mail and the Internet tying people together all around the world? And when Captain Kirk first flipped open his transponder in the 1960’s to communicate with starship Enterprise, who knew things like the iPhone and Blackberry were just around the corner?

Yuda and Ida knew. Just last week I studied a myriad of electronic applications — "apps" — for my iPhone, which enable me to check the latest headlines, buy a longer lasting light bulb, find a great restaurant, or navigate my way home around traffic jams!

If Yuda told me 40 years ago that would be possible, Ida said Captain Kirk must’ve zapped you with his phaser on "stun."

But then, just 30 years ago, if Yuda told me America would spend a fortune beating the USSR to the moon, and after winning that race would abandon colonizing and using the moon as a launch pad for deep space exploration, Ida said you were moonstruck.

If Yuda told me 20 years ago that major league baseball would be tarnished as sluggers used performance-enhancing drugs to set records forevermore regarded as suspect, Ida said you’d been beaned with a high, hard fastball.

Ten years ago, even, if Yuda told me that a new age of terrorism would dawn with the 21st century, Ida said you’ve been watching too many James Bond movies.

Just last week, as the cool, refreshing, crisp fall weather associated with football season rolled into Georgia, I reverted to arising really early in the morning. October is when my favorite winter time constellations make their annual appearance, you see; Orion, Taurus, the Pleiades Cluster and Cassiopeia twinkle down from the southeastern skies in the pre-dawn hours.

As our planet prescribes its orbit, every morning the sun appears over the ridge in my back yard a little more to the north than it did the day before. The leaves of my backyard neighbor’s dogwood tree and the heavily-laden scuppernong vines on our fence show hints of yellow today. By the time those dogwood leaves flame bright orange and the scuppernong vines go solid gold, the sun will be rising at the northeastern corner of my neighbor’s property. Every morning for weeks thereafter — along about the time the second pot of coffee is ready — my back yard will be ablaze with a much-anticipated, spectacular light show.

Oh, about that bench I mentioned earlier? It’s situated so I can contemplate Orion framed between tall pines in our front yard after he’s moved to the southwestern skies in late winter.

Now, if Yuda told me in my youth that one day I’d get excited about the rising sun turning leaves into a light show, or that I’d use pine trees to frame stars twinkling in the night sky, Ida said that was crazy.

Yes, after giving it some thought, I just don’t remember ever meeting those guys named Yuda and Ida. But they surely do seem to know their stuff, don’t they?