Part 001 of an untitled work.

1. Time Travel

• Things I wanted to tell me
• Plans I had
• How the ‘72 Dolphins and Microsoft and Cisco were going to Make My Day

Let’s start with time travel.

But before we start there, you need to know this:

For reasons that may or may not become clear later on in this narrative, I never saw eye to eye with my mother and the various husbands and lovers she took during my childhood only aggravated that situation. As you may have surmised, my formative years were spent with my mother but not my father. I was, I think, in second grade when that arrangement was agreed upon. Nobody asked my opinion. They never do. It’s probably just as well, I was eight years old and didn’t have a clue what was going on.

As I became older, and my father re-entered my life, I suffered some, due to the fact that all respect for authority had been erased from me in the company of my mother and her men. My father, bless his soul, tried to instill some respect for authority back into me, but it was an uphill battle. His efforts were sometimes heavy-handed and counterproductive. I did learn to fear reprisals for my actions from authority figures. Much later I learned to respect my father, not as an authority figure, but as my father and a man of age-earned wisdom. Actually that part does bear some explanation: I was seeing a married woman, and by seeing I mean that we were both in heat so bad I think it might qualify as a medical condition. I asked my dad what I should do. He said to run as fast I could and as far as I could. When I had to sleep, he said, I should sleep and then get up early and keep running and so on until she couldn’t find me and I couldn’t find her. I thanked him for his advice and told him I would remember it later. In the aftermath of the inevitable mushroom cloud that that relationship ultimately ended in, I looked back on his advice and marveled. I looked back on his advice from all the advice he had ever given me, and marveled. It turned out that on unsolicited advice, my dad ran about 50/50 good and bad. But when I asked his advice, he was pretty near perfect. Hmph. Interesting. I filed that thought away and my respect and admiration of my father rang the bell at the top of the carnival thingie and hasn’t really dipped much since.

My lack of respect for authority manifested itself most completely at school. My teachers and my mother, when she was sober, beseeched me to apply myself and to live up to my potential. I, of course, refused. My mom had drilled into me the concept that I was a genius and that it was an embarrassment to her for me to get Ds and Fs (I never got an F - lots of incompletes, but never an F). She told me that all I had to do to get Bs was show up and stay awake. She asserted that I would glean more from that than half the kids in the class, working at the peak of their ability and easily enough for me to ace the tests, and to be fair, she was right. I however, took the bit in my mouth and flat refused to get As and Bs. I had enough pride that I couldn’t outright fail, but by carefully getting straight As on all my tests but absolutely refusing to do ANY homework and never turning in a single report - except the one on Benedict Arnold - because my US History teacher wouldn’t let us say, “Benedict Arnold” in class, because he was a traitor. We had to refer to him as B.A. or not at all. SO of course, being me, I wrote a very well researched and very well written report on Benedict Arnold. I got an A. Well played Mr. Freeman! But I still proved to my satisfaction that I was capable of getting As, but could still get Ds if I wanted to.

Some of you may be a little ahead of the class here, and already see where this is headed, and you’re right. On my 18th birthday, a representative from Oxford college arrived in the middle of my surprise party and announced that they had heard clear across the pond about my masterful middle finger to The Man and that he would like to offer me and all my offspring full scholarships to attend Oxford. Which, if you were really thinking that, of course you were WAY off! Actually, I got kicked out of high school for attendance issues and slogged through a seemingly endless string of crappy jobs at shitty wages until I lucked into the computer world and discovered that my OCD/ADHD/PTSD (all self-diagnosed, of course!) added to my chattiness and inherent sociability combined to make me a perfect fit for end user support and I finally started making marginally more than minimum wage. Thank god for the Internet! And if that sentence doesn’t tell you a little about me, re-read it and recheck the punctuation.

A friend of mine coined the term “sub-optimal childhood” and I guess what I’m saying is, mine qualified. If I had made a different choice here, or applied myself even a little there, or had taken the gift granted me by good genetics and run with it, my life would have taken quite a different course than it did. The only favor I did myself, quite by accident I must admit, was that I read voraciously! I read everything I could lay hands on. Books, magazines, comics, that backs of cereal boxes, anything. The sub-optimal childhood I had been born into and had enhanced, like Michelangelo had enhanced a block of marble into David, into a carefully crafted hell of teenage angst, and defiance that resembled a Dante-esque circle of hell inhabited by only me was easily escaped through a portal into an endless stream of books. Unfortunately, every last page of the last book I read led me back into the world I had bungled so badly. I did however gain quite a little bit of knowledge by cramming that many words written by that many people into the sponge that was my young mind. Thank the gods.

“If I had made a different choice here, or applied myself even a little there, or had taken the gift granted me by good genetics and run with it, my life would have taken quite a different course than it did.” As I read and read, I found myself reading more and more Science Fiction and Fantasy wherein I discovered the existence [fictionally] of time travel. “If I had made a different choice here, or applied myself even a little there, or had taken the gift granted me by good genetics and run with it, my life would have taken quite a different course than it did.” I started to daydream about the possibilities.

What if I could go back in time and tell that eight year old kid that everything would work out, and that he didn’t need to be afraid of all the constant change? What if I could go back and tell that 10 year old kid that tanking school on purpose wasn’t hurting his mom, it was hurting….me!?! What if I could go back and tell that 12 year old kid that people are easy to read and here’s how. And if I could get him to understand that straight As in spite of the bullshit he had been dealt would make a bigger statement and be more beneficial in the long run than making his mother so enraged when she was drunk that she literally couldn’t speak words, as funny as that was, doing homework was easier, more fun and better for all concerned. What if I could go back and shake that little slacker until his fucking teeth rattled in his head and just scream in his face just before I disappear back into the future, “QUIT FUCKING ME OVER, YOU SELFISH LITTLE SHIT!”

What would my life be like?

I considered the possibilities if I could go back and only had a couple minutes to talk to me. What could I say to get my attention immediately so that my next words would be heard as completely as possible. I always assumed it would be just a couple minutes, because all wishes have to have a weakness or a shortcoming of some kind. Just like I preferred Spider-Man to Superman or Batman, because Superman was SO super it was practically cheating and Batman was so rich, that superheroing to him could have just been a hobby. Spider-Man wasn’t a jillionaire. Bullets didn’t bounce off him. He didn’t have a team to back him up. He couldn’t even fly. What he had was guilt about Uncle Ben and an elderly Aunt May to look out for. His love life was a train wreck, his best friend wanted to kill him, his boss wanted him jailed, and the police were constantly mad at him. In any gathering of heroes he was the weak one. But quick thinking and a big science brain coupled with his spider sense (which only alerted him to danger) saw him through most situations just fine. So of course I couldn’t go back in time and totally school the kid. I couldn’t coach him up before every event that mattered. I couldn’t be his new, adult friend who’s new in town and inexplicably has taken a liking to young Marty so much that the two are inseparable. That would be cheating. I had the Spider-Man of wishes. I had an unknown number of minutes, more than 3 less than 10 in which to impress the kid, get him to believe that I am him, and give him clear, simple and easy to remember instructions before I was whisked away again.

My plan was simple. I would just go back to Tuesday, August 1, 1972, at which time I would be 8 years old. More specifically, I would be 8 years, 9 months, 22 days old. And I would convince myself to listen to myself and then write in the dirt:

Miami Dolphins:

1. Pre: 3-3 NO BETTING! (Proof)
2. Regular: 14-0 Bet on game 1 and let it ride!
3. Playoffs: 2-0 Let it ALL ride!
4. SB: Win! LET IT ALL RIDE!

• $10 = $1.3 Mil
• $25 = $3.2 Mil
• $50 = $6.5 mIL
• $250 = $32.7 MlLLION

You make the call!

Yes. I have given this an unhealthy amount of thought and planning, but I used to hitchhike a lot and I had a lot of between-ride time to contemplate! Don’t judge me.

I would also write:

1. Buy Microsoft Stock 3/13/1986 for $21/share
2. Sell 12/1/1999 - after splits every orig share will = 272 shares at $51.38/share
3. 750 shares for $15,750 on 3/13/1986 = $10.5 Mil on 12/1/1999
4. 8/18/2004 Buy Google $85/share up over 600% by mid-May 2012 (1,500 shares at $127,500.00 = $765,000.00)

I think you see where I’m headed - for a guy who grew up with no money, it was an attractive daydream! No money woes ever again. If everyone is going to the movies, off you go! No pre-planning required. A car! A car that doesn’t incessantly break down, and if it does, you can just have it repaired. Tickets! Tickets to plays, sporting events, concerts, Maui, and no more ‘failure to appear’ beefs because you can’t pay off a speeding ticket. Out to eat, new clothes, separate shoes for winter and summer, movies, plays, concerts, travel, etc ad nauseum.

Oftentimes I would have traded in the life I had for the possibilities available in this unattainable fantasy land. The struggles, the hardships, the stupid decisions and self inflicted wounds could all be erased with a giant cosmic do-over. It was a good daydream and fun to speculate about and escape into. It made the present more bearable during the tough times. And daydreaming is free.

--more to come.