Gonna Go Back In Time

As I set the alarm on my phone last night, I noticed that the date was a full two days off. My immediate reaction was not “There must be some bug in my phone’s hardware and this is what I get for always going for the free phone rather than actually spending money on a better model.” It was not “I bet this has something to do with the day last week when my phone refused to receive or transmit any calls.” No, my immediate reaction was… “I wonder if I traveled through time.” When I was brushing my teeth it was Monday but just a couple minutes later it was, according to my cheap phone, Wednesday. Amazingly enough, time travel doesn’t feel any different than climbing into bed. Okay, so it’s not probable...but it’s certainly possible.

There’s an abandoned car in the parking garage of my office building. I have no idea how long it’s been there but I first noticed it about three years ago when I started parking in a different spot. It’s a maroon two-door with Missouri plates, covered in a half inch of dust and I now park next to it every morning because I like being that close to a mystery. Why would someone abandon a car? Perhaps the owner was trying to flee an abusive husband and she had to leave all traces of her previous life behind. Maybe the owner was arrested at work, thrown directly in jail and couldn’t collect his car because he was denied bail. Those are both very viable explanations, sure. But you know what I think? I think the owner stumbled into a wormhole on the way to the elevator and is now stuck in the Santa Monica of the mid 1950’s. Why not, right?

I’ve seen Donnie Darko. The Director’s Cut. I guilted Albers into buying it for me. And on the third viewing it made sense. I’m not going to sit here and explain it to you because you should really see the movie. But let’s just say I traveled forward and then backward in time in the span of typing this sentence. I’m sure some mathematician would tell me I did not, in fact, travel forward and backward in time while typing. And then he would point to a bunch of numbers and squiggles on a dry-erase board to prove to me that time travel is impossible. Well I don’t understand what those numbers and squiggles mean and I also don’t understand why that mathematician is such a buzz kill. Just let me travel through time in peace, you buttface. You don’t see Will Hunting trying to rain on some time traveler’s parade, do you? Yeah, I didn’t think so. Oh…Will Hunting was a math whiz from south Boston played by Matt Damon in the Oscar winning film Good Will Hunting (I just don’t want you to be confused in case you are reading this as a time traveler from 1996).

See you yesterday,

gretch