Time to Dig Something Big Out of the Sand
Every once in a while, I remember something: We live in the most unbelievably amazing time in all of human history.
Too often, I feel like Life is in the moment: The traffic today sucked, what am I going to eat for dinner, how much is the electric bill this month, etc etc etc. Fart fart fat.
All of us are people made up of a patchwork of memories of the past and hopes and fears of the future; but I always seem to forget that childhood and adulthood are separated by time - seconds, minutes, hours, years - nothing more. “The World That I Lived In As A Kid” still exists, even though I’m an adult. Those places I visited that shaped me so profoundly didn’t fall away into the void; they’re still patiently waiting somewhere in the world… To either be rediscovered physically or only seen again in the dreams I forget before I wake. Mankind might never discover a true “Time Machine” that lets us travel into the future… But we’ve already invented time machines that let us travel back into the past. Don’t believe me?
Take, for instance, the cellphone: Right this very second, I have a device in my pocket that lets me talk to anyone at a moment’s notice; my parents 3000 miles away; my childhood friends sprinkled across the continent; or my ex-girlfriend (provided, of course, that she’s not still pissed at me for what happened when I was back in New York). All three are a link to who I was and who I still am (when I’m not being an asshole, of course. And if you’re reading this, once again, I’m sorry.)
But whatever, right? Cellphones! Big fucking deal! Well, here’s something even more amazing: Using this keyboard and this screen and thousands of miles of cable that unnamed and unthanked people have laid across this country and the world, I can use one of the most recent time traveling inventions Man has created to literally peer back through time: Google Map Street View. STILL FEELING SMART, A-HOLE?!
For instance:
Here is a scene from my childhood that is stamped indelibly upon my subconscious:
Every Summer when I was growing up, my parents would shove my sister and I into the back of a car, and we would make the 6 hour - SIX HOUR - drive Up North to the wilds of Northern Michigan. Everyone knows that to a child, Time crawls at a snail’s pace - so the moment my dad would pilot our car around this one particular bend in the road and we would first see the small sliver of twinkling pure blue that was Lake Michigan in the summertime, I knew that we were almost there: My little heart would leap, my little bladder would scream, and a fresh new summertime adventure would start. This is that bend and that strip of blue that I remember seeing like it was this morning:
Here is the patch of grass outside the elementary school that I went to - where, in the 5th grade, I was in the one and only fight of my entire life. I can look down and still see the grass stains on my knees; the bright red blood on one knuckle. (I learned later in college that a girl I was dating had had a crush on my 5th grade opponent at the time of the fight):
And, of course, what suffocatingly nostalgic, self indulgent trip down memory lane would be complete without showing you all the house that I grew up in… Only, it was green when I lived there:
That is pretty fucking cool, right? That you can remember a place and then just dial it up without leaving your couch? We are truly living in The Future. (PS - The next time someone says “Where’s my Jetpack?” kick them in the fucking throat.)
Now you. I want to see a place that meant something to you as a child.
Double points if it’s a Hooters. ;)
