Just Enough Time

When Cher sang “If I Could Turn Back Time” she had no idea that I had been doing that and much more for several years now. Time was never my friend, or so I thought, until the day of my accident. It was one of those freak occurrences I would normally laugh about if it had happened to someone else. I was on a tropical vacation, enjoying the surf and sand, when a gust of wind dislodged a coconut from a high branch in the tree I was sitting under. It hit me square on the forehead, knocking me out cold. I know, hilarious right, like something out of a 50s cartoon. The actual effect of the accident was that I was in a coma for three weeks.

When I finally woke up, I had a splitting headache and was surrounded by beeping machines. As Struggling to regain my equilibrium, I bumped into a tray with a drink on it. As the glass tumbled from the tray, the first word to pop into my mind was stop! That is exactly what the glass did. It just hung in mid-air, defying gravity. My first reaction was stunned disbelief. This can’t be real. I dismissed what I was experiencing as an effect of the coma and real time would take over, and the glass would continue to the floor. The glass remained hanging in space until I grabbed it. I used a swooping motion to put the spilled liquid back in the container and replaced it on the tray. My next thought was that was weird. The sounds from the machines in the room resumed and everything was normal once again.

I left the hospital several days later, not mentioning the incident to anyone. It was time to experiment with my newfound superpower, but first I needed more information. My first stop was the local library, where I read up on time travel and time manipulation. Of course, everything I read was theoretical, but there was one central theme the researchers described as the Butterfly Effect. If a butterfly flaps its wings on one side of the earth, it causes an event on the opposite side of the globe. A minor pause in time to rescue a falling glass may have little or no effect on anything. Then again, it could cause an auto accident on the opposite side of the world because the flow of time was interrupted. This ability was definitely nothing to use for entertaining guests at a dinner party.

I left the library playing out different scenarios in my mind that might justify using my new power. Ironically, it was while I was deliberating the question that my next challenge presented itself. A small child broke away from her mother and ran into the path of an oncoming truck. Stop, I shouted in my mind, and all activity froze. I walked to the girl, picked her up, and returned her to her mother. After placing the girl's hand in her mother’s hand, I simply thought of the word Go. All motion returned to normal. The truck passed the mother and child without incident. No one was aware of what I did, except for me, of course. The Butterfly Effect could mean that the girl will later give birth to the next Einstein or the next Jeffrey Dahmer. She could be the person who ends global hunger. I had no way of knowing what the ultimate result of today’s actions would be. What I knew for certain was I saved a life today and that can’t be bad.

Time, and the ability to manipulate it, will be my best friend or my worst enemy. Only time will tell.