Time Flying

by Dan Garmen

  The weekly critique exhausted itself, the bits redone and shared among ourselves to the point they weren't funny anymore, Will stood up to return his tray and leave, but not before looking at me and saying, in his level, direct way 'I hear you passed out in the hallway this morning...'

  “No,” I replied testily, without thinking, “I didn't pass out. I slipped and fell.”

  “Coach says you're not doing your rehab”

  Damn. MacLaren had talked to Will, and once again, I had no memory of having this conversation 30 years before.

  'He said that?' I asked, my leg starting to ache again. I'd forgotten the pain for a while, it had returned.

  'Don't you want to play next year? We've been working for this 3 years. I’m not missing winning State because you fell off a roof and aren’t interested in getting up off your ass, and back in shape, Rich.'

  Will turned and left before I said anything, which was pure Will Curry. One minute we're laughing about Raquel Welch's tits and the next he's giving me a direct stream of flack to the face and walking away, leaving me the biggest loser Indianapolis has ever seen. Meanwhile, Walter and Rick both sat mute, not wanting to get in between us. Walter gave me a sympathetic half-smile and rolled eyes. Rick, however, looked like a kid much younger than his 16 years, in over his head. His expression “what the hell?” which, for some unjust reason, pissed me off. All I could think to say as I stood up and gathered my own tray was 'Stay away from Wiccans, Rick. You'll be better off' and I was off, making the decision to do something I'd never done before.

  I cut class.

  So far, I'd run into Coach MacLaren, gotten shit from Will, and despite what I told him, passed out in the hallway, all of which added up to a little more nostalgia than I had a taste for. All I needed now…, I thought, and as if on cue, it hit me, the one and only perfume in the world I knew by scent - Taboo. I looked to the right, and she was there, walking away from me, thick, blonde hair in a ponytail swaying as she walked, a bit less than her hips. Visceral youth washed over me, and then through my body, reminding me what being young was all about, adrenaline, testosterone coursing through your veins. It was an amazing sensation. As the ponytail strode in the opposite direction, out the double doors connecting the lunchroom to the hallway, I realized I was looking at the one person in this whole damn school I didn't want to run into until I was ready, the girl/woman who over the past 30 years I've struggled with not having in my life.

  Her name, to this day, makes my heart flutter and blood pressure rise, and her 17 year old self walked away from me at a determined pace, yet the Taboo remained. Holy Christ, I thought. She is the most beautiful creature in the world, an opinion I held then, and...well, now. My stomach seemed to be turning over five or six times a second, something only Amanda Tully ever caused.

  I need to tell you about this girl, with the caveat that there was I time when I wished her memory would leave me forever. I walked past the doors she had passed through seconds before, the scene with Will forgotten, because my feelings for the girl have haunted me for almost 30 years. All the other regrets in my life totaled didn’t equal the loss that lived in me because I hadn’t said what I felt years ago, and didn’t do what I should have.

  When I say Amanda was the most beautiful creature on the face of the earth, I don't mean in a glossy glamour magazine way. To someone who had not been in love with her all his life, she was a pretty, self-assured and attractive girl, but they'd be able to sleep at night. That wasn’t me, no, I loved her from the first time I saw her in the 7th grade until...Well, except for short periods, I never stopped loving her. For a long time, able to rationalize the whole thing by telling myself I love the idea of Amanda, and she only represented my childhood. Who said, “When you long for the home house you grew up with, you're not longing for the place, but for your childhood?” I guess “people” can be substituted for “house” or “home," but seeing her walking away, the subtle scent of her perfume still in the air, told me all the rationalizations amounted to nothing. I loved her in 1976 and I love her now. Whatever this experience turns out to be, Amanda Tully wasn't what I needed right now. The best alternative?

  I was SO cutting class.

  Escaping turned out to be easier than I'd imagined. Between 5th and 6th period, I took a left at the hallway intersection instead of a right, and rather than head to Physical Science, I hit the parking lot, looking like I had every right to be there, pulled the keys to the El Camino out of my pocket and opened the door. This little full-immersion trip down memory lane had gotten old, its welcome almost worn out. I needed to get clear of this nostalgia factory and think. Under normal circumstances, I'd head to a coffee shop, but since the nearest Starbucks, or Seattle's Best meant a four day drive , I didn't have the option to grab a vanilla latte. It would have to be someplace quiet, where my chances of running into someone I knew was small.

  The answer hit me in an instant, the library.

  Fortunately, no one witnessed me walking to the parking lot and get into the El Camino, or if they did, my self-assurance while leaving school after lunch made them assume I was legitimately leaving. It had been so long since I had not been allowed to go where I pleased, departing was difficult at all. A few minutes later, driving toward the public library, I realized being AWOL wasn't the same as ducking out of work for a couple hours. I had committed a crime, and I’d be lying if I said the feeling wasn’t a good one. I wondered why I never did this kind of thing when 17.

  In reality, if I had cut class in high school, the destination probably WOULD have been the library, I reflected sadly, and I'm sure the punishment would have been fairly light. I mean, it's one thing to ditch school to smoke cigarettes or chase girls and something else entirely to go to the library.

  Driving to the library, away from all the familiar and nostalgic sights and sounds, I started to worry again this situation. The thought I am dead returned, so I started reviewing facts about my life in 2007. I wanted to convince myself this experience was real, and not some symptom of some chemical imbalance in 1976. I thought about the bank accounts I had, at branches in San Diego, a city I never visited until the early 80s. I thought about my computer passwords, what the computers I owned looked like. I thought about Steve Jobs, and the sight of him giving his 2007 Macworld Keynote Address, when he introduced the iPhone to the world. I had been in the audience as a representative of my company, a developer of Macintosh software, and I distinctly remembered walking out, while John Mayer played on stage, and called Molly on my Blackberry, telling her our world was about to change, then Gary, telling him the same thing, except in more technical terms, about how we need to start the process of designing software for this device. The Macintosh, let alone the iPhone, did not exist in 1976, yet in my mind's eye, I saw the various screens and the information they displayed. How would it be possible for me to envision the iPod in 1976? I thought about all the music, movies and TV shows I had on mine, and how I moved them from my Mac Mini to the device. I had always been always a smart kid, but I never could have come up with all this in such detail, but if somehow my mind was creating this, I needed to be writing it all down, because these are million...No, BILLION dollar ideas.

  I started to think about my family, my mom, dad and sister and of course, my wife and daughter. I thought of their names, their appearance in 2007 in our house in San Diego, the presents we bought for Samantha for her birthday a few days before I flew to Cincinnati for the first time.

  Cincinnati.

  With a mental thud, the thought of the Hummer hit me, harder than the real vehicle had and I seemed to experience the crash again. The thought I was dead came back in a rush of certainty. I must be. Oh, crap, is this what death is? A sudden backtrack into a previous point in our existence? What if a 1976 version of a Hummer, or a semi-truck or something t-boned me here on Girl's School Road at the next intersection and without side airbags or 2007 auto safety technology I died again? Would I be shot back a decade earlier and be sitting in Mr
s Henderson's first grade class thinking of the specs of an Apple Powerbook while the teacher read “Spot the Dog” to us? Being in a 17 year old body again was mostly cool, but the pain in my leg was returning. I did NOT want to be in a pre-pubescent form again, and while that didn’t seem possible, to be safe, I started driving like Tom Cruise's character did after picking up his Dad's car from the shop in Risky Business. Which reminded me how would I know about Risky Business, or even Tom Cruise, in 1976?

  The Wayne Public Library didn’t boast the biggest collection of books in the world, but was an excellent little refuge from the rest of life, and in the 70s, the biggest resource for my considerable curiosity about a lot of different things. At age 11, I'd spend hours poring over books on dogs, after my mother dropped me off and ran errands. At 13, it was airplanes and sports that took up most of my attention. After the accident which shattered my leg, I spent entire days in the stacks and reading room, at first unable, then later unwilling to do much physically. Starting at about this time, I read a lot time reading about meditation, which a few 'experts' were starting to say helped with pain, mostly hippie stuff inspired by The Beatles' study in India a few years before.

  The “Medical” section was well stocked, as I discovered late in my Senior year of High School (a year or so from now). The books inspired an interest in medicine, pleasing to my parents. What I ended up getting out of the research I did, however, resulted in years of trouble. Information about opiates, and their benefits in managing pain. I should have stuck with dogs and airplanes.

  I walked through the familiar double doors and glanced around, taking the distantly familiar sights in. No one was here, neither of the two librarians who bustled around the building during the day, no patrols browsing through the shelves of books. It was quiet.

  I turned to the right and headed toward the section containing the medical books, and started looking at book spines for Neurology texts. Within a couple minutes, I had pulled three from the shelf and carried them to one of the tables at the end of the row of bookcases. Not sure what to look for, I started skimming the first book. After a couple minutes, I sat back, glanced out the window and began to again try to put this whole thing in some sort of comprehendible context.

  It was a waste of time.

  I couldn't find anything about any neurological conditions involving someone who became “unstuck” in time, or even any causing them to believe it had happened. I began to search for cases of people in comas who imagined highly detailed worlds that turned out to be hallucinations. I didn’t find as much as I thought I would. In fact, there was nothing.

  No answers here.

  After a couple hours, I realized the final bell must have rung at school and I'd be expected somewhere at some point soon. Home? After my accident, I didn't work for my Dad very much. Even after recovering, he seemed reluctant to ask for my help, either at a building site or in the office. I know now it had been a huge case of guilt, because I had been working for his company when I fell.

  Once again in Tom Cruise mode, I drove home.

  When I arrived home, I realized I hadn’t needed to hurry. According to Thelma, the often smiling, but strict disciplinarian black woman who took care of our house and my sister, my mother was at the office. Mom worked part-time for the family business. Thelma was downstairs ironing clothes, helping my sister with her reading, Katie working through a thin, hard-backed second grade reader, only occasionally needing prompting from Thelma, who seemed to have the books memorized. When I reflect on these days, Thelma now seems to resemble a character from a TV show, much smarter than 1970s Indiana assumed a middle-aged African-American woman should be, but almost never recognized for it. She never seemed to have anything to prove to anyone and in all the years she worked for us, maintaining our household and taking care of my sister, she never displayed her ample supply of knowledge unless prompted to. Seeing her again, I was ashamed for not knowing what had become of her after I left home. A couple years later, she left my family’s employ.

  'Hello, young Mr Ricardo,' Thelma said, greeting me with the name she alone used for me. It had been so long since I had heard those words, I couldn't help a small smile and the quick warmth and throat tightening remembering long-forgotten things brought. Then, I remembered at the time, I had hated her calling me Ricardo, as I had hated most things, thanks to my mental outlook in 1976.

  “Hi Thelma, hi Katie,” I said as I bent to kiss my little sister on the top of her head. I looked up to see Thelma looking at me through narrowed eyes.

  “How was school today?” Thelma asked, looking back down at her ironing. Katie had returned to her book.

  “A strange day, Thelma,” I replied, and left.

  Later, lying on my bed unconsciously rubbing my thigh, hurting again and I heard my mother come into the house, the front door closing, keys being deposited on the table in the entryway and the sound of her footsteps echoing down the stairs. A few minutes later, Thelma's heavier footsteps came back the same way, a she approached my room and knocked.

  “Richard, you in here?” She asked.

  “Yea, Thelma, come in,” I said as I sat up, swinging my feet to the floor.

  Door opened. “How you doin’, young man?” Thelma asked, her voice hushed. The question wasn’t rhetorical. She was looking for an answer.

  “I’m fine,” I said, smiling.

  “I may have born at night, boy, but it wasn't last night.”

  Why could I almost always bullshit my parents, but never Thelma?

  My smile faded. For some reason I don't understand, only that it seemed like the right thing to do, I paused a heartbeat and said, “I’m 47 years old, Thelma. At least I was when I woke up this morning. I had a car accident, and woke up again here this morning. For me, this is all 30 years in the past.”

  A smile I doubt touched my eyes accompanied my words.

  Thelma looked at me with the same narrowed gaze she used earlier. “30 years, huh? You got any kids?”

  The question startled me. “One, a little girl,” I replied.

  “Where do you live?”

  “San Diego.”

  She laughed a short bark-like laugh. “I thought so. Well, at least you got out of this town,” Thelma said, nodding her approval, “Good for you.”

  I lightened up at this point. “You making fun of me” I asked.

  “Me?” Thelma replied, her eyebrows raised in mock innocence. “When did I ever make fun of you, boy?” He smiled widened as she added, “Never!”

  “Always,” I insisted, laughing. “You constantly made fun of me.”

  “MADE fun of you? You mean MAKE fun of you, don't you?” She asked.

  Not sure where this was going, I kept my mouth shut.

  “Why do you think you're back here?” Thelma broke the silence after a few seconds. I couldn't believe she was treating this as not only real, but common...Ordinary.

  “Haven't the foggiest idea,” I said.

  “Maybe you got something to do you didn't do the first time. Something left undone. What would that be, Rich?”

  Thelma called me “Ricardo,” or “Richard,” or “child” but never “Rich.” I shrugged. “I guess. Probably more things I wouldn’t do, given a second chance, but…”

  “And you’re thinking you're dead, too. Right? You said you had a crash?”

  I nodded. “Yup, I think that is the best bet, especially with you and I having this conversation.”

  Thelma frowned, shaking her head. “No, you're not dead, child, you're alive. You're just living in the past right now. It happens sometimes.”

  I nodded, silent. Just when I thought this couldn’t get any weirder.

  “And by the way,” she continued. “You better come up with a good reason why you left school today. You were supposed to talk to your coach, but you weren't around when he went looking for you. He called for your Mom.” A small smile had slipped onto her face.

  “Yea, right,” I answered. “Thanks.”

&nb
sp; Thelma shrugged. “I’m guessing your ass is grass, boy. Let me ask you something. Is Amanda the mama of your baby girl in the future?”

  “No, she's not.”

  'MMMM HMMM,' Thelma half-said-half-sang. “Well, then, maybe THAT’S why you're back here, Richie.”

  I didn't answer.

  “She called, too,” Thelma continued, with a little laugh. My stomach again sank as I realized I didn't leave school today to get away and think, I left so I wouldn't run into Amanda. Shit.

  “Well, future-man, I gotta go catch my bus. They got them flying cars 30 years from now?” Thelma asked.

  “No, not yet.”

  “Too bad,” Thelma answered, shaking her head, “What about the stock market? Got any tips to make me rich…Rich?” She asked with a bigger smile.

  I thought for a minute. “Yea, a new company starting up in a couple years called Apple. Go buy real estate in Las Vegas and Phoenix. You'll do fine,” I replied.

  “Okay, then, see you later.” Thelma called, as she left, leaving my bedroom door open.

  What the hell? Thelma sure seemed to know something about this, but she always loved to yank my chain, which pissed me off at the time. It wasn’t until years later that I realized how important she had been in my life, how she had helped keep my ego in check at a time when it could have gotten me into a lot of trouble. Thelma believing when I said I had traveled 30 years back in time would be completely bizarre, but then, I reasoned, would it be any more strange than if I had?

  My leg had stopped hurting, and as the sounds of my mother making dinner reached my bedroom, my 17 year old body again made itself known. I was hungry, so I got up from the bed and went to help. Thelma would have loved THAT.

  Thelma had been telling me the truth when she said Coach MacLaren called to tell my Mother I had skipped coming by his office, and both my Mom and Dad let me know how mad they were about it. You have to understand in Indiana in the 70s, and I supposed to this day, basketball is all-important. Like high school football in Texas, during the season, basketball dominated life for those involved. Coach MacLaren was respected like no other coach or teacher at Ben Davis, by teachers, administrators, students and parents. When it came to his players, he carried authority most parents held above their own. Not being as anchored here as the last time I worked my way through April of 1976, the whole thing didn't bother me much. I took the chewing out, appearing appropriately chagrined, and promised them I'd go talk to Coach first thing in the morning. I also got quizzed by my mother about doing my physical therapy, after Dad found a reason to excuse himself from the discussion. The physical therapy always seemed too uncomfortable for him to talk about, since he felt responsible for the accident. I didn't understand the first time through this time in my life, but I get it now. I watched him leave the kitchen when my Mom switched to the topic, and I felt sorry for him. The accident hadn’t been his fault.