The world is so full of a number of things,
I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings
RLS—Robert Louis Stevenson
To live, how amazing!
Sean Crawford
A Housewife Time Traveled
As for amazing, you may recall that in the major motion picture, Peggy Sue Got Married, she is a wife and mother who jumps back into her high school body. How wonderful to see things fresh. She laughs and laughs when her father brings home the latest model car—and it’s the infamous Edsel.
RLS: Fiction is to the grown man what play is to the child; it is there that he changes the atmosphere and tenor of his life.
I Time Travelled too, but in the Opposite Direction
As for cars, I time jumped into my current body, from the past, and said, “What? What am I doing in a space car? Why is the speedometer over in the centre of the dashboard, and why is there a computer screen number instead of a good relatable needle in a circle? Why are there no protruding buttons for a dashboard radio? Maybe, ha-ha, I get music from space, from a space satellite! …Amazing.
RLS: Nothing like a little judicious levity.
I look at my hand on the wheel: same old scar, it’s me all right. I’m wearing a parka. But instead of being a conservative dull monotone, or romantic but dull army camouflage, it’s bright yellow with reeds and bullrushes. What, did I take up duck hunting? Or become less shy, at last? Or maybe I wanted to make sure everybody would know I had no fantasies of being in the US Marine Corps.
RLS: To know what you prefer, instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.
I suppose in this future I’m rich, because the car was obviously bought brand-new, instead of being my usual used-car where I would save a few bucks by getting a reliable manual transmission. That’s amazing.
I gaze through the wind screen. I’m on a highway. The mountains of the Pacific Northwest are gone, and the land is flat, flat, flat. I must have left “home sweet home” for the Great Plains to have a job to be filthy rich. I mean, why else would I leave? Maybe I drink champagne and smoke cigars now.
…
Afterthought …As for US Marine parkas, space cars, and other fantastical stuff:
Seen on a Japanese teenage girl’s T-shirt
I like what I like—now get off my back!
… …
… …
Sean Crawford
In my favourite space-time location,
January
2025
About that parka: While getting A’s at university, in middle age, I noticed my fellow uptight nerds tend to wear brown and blend into the walls. Hence the yellow.
