I'll sometimes find myself shocked to a freezing stop because I imagine "where was the last time I experienced this? or "what was my life like last time I was here?" I'm worried time will snap back and Ill go to the last time I had chocolate covered jalapenos (A snoozy double date at Huntington Beach in Bay Village, Ohio) and have to re-live my whole life from that moment. With all the knowledge of the past but the same resources, people, and places as the original time. Dare I reset the timeline and try to change it? Or just re-live the time spent between high and low moments?
One time my oldest cat got out and spent most of the day circling the hours and lingering in the low sightlines of our ranch home. She eventually came to the front door and batted at the glass bottom panel of the half screen door. Our other cat, a chubby black tomcat, lost his mind. He puffed up and snarled and hissed, all in defiance of his usual loopy doopy manner. If our life was Peter and the Wolf, then he would be the kazoo. Maybe she spent so much time outside that she got another scent? The smell of another animal? To him, this was a whole new cat he was meeting for the first time all over. No clocks moved back or forth but that is my feeling. My fear.
Any self serving person would hate to go back to high school. I car less and overweight, even with the cumulative knowledge of 30 plus years, would still seek solace in books and cable TV. Let me read all the other things I didn't focus on. The hackneyed thing to say is that I would try to get with girls with another shot at it. But, honestly, I would try to stop the cringe inducing embracing things done and said to try and impress the 25 or so girls in my HS class. I'll never meet these people again. . I know that because the time gods sent me back when I thought of last time I made an Oedipus Rex reference (9th grade Spanish). Not worth it and risk embarrassing my self in a whole new way.
If I went back to college then I would take the two more classes to graduate with a minor in art history. And not sell my Magic cards in the funky LGS above the used bookstore for $200. Which was a killing back then but the memories are worth more now.
In adult hood, I hope the time snap takes me back to meeting people for first time. "Oh, here are your copies. I think you left them on the machine." Those memories are Cinco de Mayo ones. The gaudy beaded stylized Mariachi hats the Mexican place makes you wear on your birthday. I drove by a shuttered pizza place yesterday (which was previously a failed yoga studio) which was also a coffee shop we used to stop at when my son was very young and we pushed him around the neighborhood in his stroller. Those memories are fall leaves and black forest cake.
A lot of these are food related. Makes sense since it is so connected to our mind and our very need to seek nourishment. But they are also run of the mill. I'm in a thrift shop and see a mustard corduroy jacket and I think of last time I wore corduroy. It was in junior year of college when I was at my skinniest and I am helping my girlfriend mover into a summer sublet. A place with a submarine slice of a kitchen with a manual gas stove called Martha Washington.
There is no power in this form of time travel. It would be random but controlled by the triggers of the everyday.
The last time I laid down painter's tape--Painting my son's nursery an electric blue
The last time I struggled with an exterior dryer vent--a soggy house we rented for four years after we barely escaped the mortgage of our first (and only) home. The rental had a history of clever "non-code" solutions by the landlady's dead husband, including what had to be a whole addition done just with lots of pluck.
Every time I zip up a windbreaker I think how that was my shtick in high school---to wear this grey and black and yellow (Batman colors!) wind breaker even though it was always 80 degrees and sunny. I should wear less windbreakers save I go back armed with just more archival knowledge and smattering of who wins the Super Bowl.
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