TIME TRAVEL & STUFF

I used to think that nostalgia was a thing of the past. That was, until I swapped my rose-coloured glasses for a pair of burgunday coke-bottle goggles: a transaction which took place under the auspices of a man named Sanchez, who was possessed of a dead eye and a penchant for pnuematic blondes whose names ended in the letter Y. From that day on I was doomed to a life of wistful and maudlin mooning over good times that would never be again.

I spend my days in a reverie of fictional schooldays. A Gernsback Continuum of Peanuts, MAD Magazine satires and a mental reflection of classic school scenes from a myriad of 1960s sitcoms and Golden Books. In my mind’s eye I was the boy on the metallic red lid of the Esco mathematical instruments. I was Calvin, Charlie Brown and Alfred E Neuman. I was every school-aged character who appeared in “The Lighter Side Of...” and Al Jaffee’s ‘Student Hate Book’. I want to return to a point in my life that never existed.

Even in kindergarten I sensed it. The used toys and the faded alphabet surrounding me belonged to others. Mrs Bazeos herself belonged to the past. Born as I was on the cusp of a new decade, all culture seemed to be in transit. The images on Sesame Street and the introduction to Play School belonged to the past. A fictional past. Even if I had been around five years earlier, I still would have missed it. Pictures lie.

When I was a kid, I was certain that I would invent a time machine. I’d collect bits of discarded electronica and other crap I thought might be useful – bolts, screws and such. I would look at old photographs and know in my bones that I would travel back to see my parents growing up, to warn Gough Whitlam of the Dismissal, and invent something awesome (besides the time machine, which movies and books told me had to be kept super secret). I would once again see the awesome orange nodules of Corrimal Court’s original décor, play sit-down Frogger and the KISS pinball machine for 20c each at Figtree Pub, and be able to legitimately wear maroon shirts with seagulls on them. I would take back a copy of some best-seller, and rewrite it in my own hand. I would be a genius out of my own time.

Of course, now that I’ve grown up I only partially believe that I’ll ever create that Chronomobile. I still need to go back and punch that girl who was bullying me back in 1990. I made a promise to myself I intend to keep. My partial loss of faith in my scientific ability has grown with the realisation that my only knowledge of time travel is made up of the following:

Flux Capacitor: the one thing that makes time travel possible. I can’t tell you how many times I have fallen off my toilet on purpose in the hopes of making a similar breakthrough.
The TARDIS, from which I have learned that time travel is hard and uncontrollable. Also, it is probably better to be able to travel in space as well as time if I want to see anything more interesting that the dedication of JJ Kelly Park or the incorporation of the City of Wollongong in the 1940s.
“All You Zombies”, an awesome short story by Robert Heinlein.
Superman flying around the sun really fast. This seems untenable unless there’s something my aprents haven’t told me about my secret origins, and there has always been a low level of Kryptonite around me.
Moebius Strips – how do they do it???
That theory from Dragonlance where time is a river and you can only make ripples by throwing a rock into it.
“Be Excellent to Each Other” and “Party on, Dudes” are the cornerstones of future society.
If there is ever a Timequake, it will be simultaneously awesome and depressing.
Christopher Lloyd really doesn’t know as much as he makes out he does.
There was an article in The Onion a few years ago which summed me up completely. “Area Man Permanently Nostalgic for Four Years Ago”. That’s me in a nutshell. Gee I miss 2000. Nah nah nah. Seriously, I yearn for days that I hated when I was living through them the first time. Jobs I despised seem like golden years. Acquaintances who bored me seem like kindred spirits. Even high school seems like the best years I’ll ever experience. If I had a time machine, I could travel back and smash the HSC. Get 100% or something. That is possibly the saddest use of the awesome power of time travel I can imagine. Except for the one where I go back and ask that girl out in primary school. That might cause some problems.

I think I’ll probably just save up and buy a DeLorean. It is probably the closest I’ll ever get to the past, unless I can somehow harness the magic of television or the power of the movies. DeLoreans are cool, even without Mr Fusion to give them power.

People of Earth: If I am chosen as your representative Chrononaut, I promise to go back and kill one of my ancestors, to solve that little conundrum once and for all. In addition, I vow not to do anything too hackneyed like killing Hitler or the Daleks as a baby, or stopping a presidential assassination. What I cannot promise, however, is that I won’t note down winning Powerball numbers or build a multi-storey casino after winning a packet on the horses and shooting my rival so that I can marry his wife and treat her so poorly that her son will, through a complicated series of events each more comic and suspense-filled than the last, cause me to (a) lose it all and (b) drive into a manure truck.

I HATE MANURE!!!

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