The D.I.D. Club

“My name is Naomi.”

“Hi, Naomi,” the group of 15 or 20 respond in near unison.

“This is my t-third time coming to the Do It Differently club.” The stutter lays the unspoken plea for sympathy on thick, I thought. She pushed out each word with her breath. The microphone strained under all those ‘D’ sounds; and why not just use the abbreviation of the club name? Besides, it’s really a loose affiliation of dreamers, hardly what I’d call a club. But every attendee calls it something different, and I don’t discriminate, and club makes it sound official. As long as there’s money in it, right? $39.95 gets you free coffee and donuts, and a guarantee to alter your life, (or at least the perception you have of your life, but that’s fine print stuff, why bother with it?). It's not a philosophy club, and let's be honest: I'm selling peace of mind.

Naomi tried twice to report me for theft and fraud, but no dice. Her case might be more solid if she didn't always come back to pay for more. She started out coming to the D.I.D Club a moldable lump of clay looking ready to change her past. Now, Naomi just flat out thinks the system is against her. System? Nah, maybe the entire universe. Heard that one before?

It’s the same old drill. She stands up at the podium fighting back tears and announces why she's here, to try to make her past regrets “right”. I give everyone a chance at the podium. Gives me time to sit in the back row of folding chairs to survey each person, mark, however you want to term it; sort of size up what I’m working with.

After the second time in the club, Naomi made no secret of her displeasure in the experiences she’d had since starting to attend club meetings.

“It’s a scam.”

“It’s too painful.”

“Maybe we’re not supposed to fix the past.”

She may as well be reciting lines by this point, but I let her have her go. I can roll with anything. Hell, I’ve added her as the unofficial “straight man” to my selling points. It’s perfect. Something I've noticed in that everyone who's ever been alive seems to live their life comparing it to someone else. I call them influencers. It's either someone better than you, or someone worse. A measuring stick. This is what keeps me in business, I'll be honest.

“I’m 38.” She’s a bit more withered this time around. Sunken eye sockets, a—what is that a bonnet, or a beret? —It’s raspberry-colored. Her sweater hangs off her like death shroud. It’s gotten pretty pathetic. I’m quietly humming Prince as she continues. “I’ve gone back so many times now. I-I can’t seem to change it. My marriage, my—my baby…” Cue the water works. A woman--it’s always a woman in the first or second row—rises up to gives her a tissue.

Clockwork. She's my call to action. She can't change it... but maybe you can?

As I look at her now I can’t help but remember seeing Naomi after her first meeting of the D.I.D. club nearly three years ago.. We were outside the meeting space. Everyone was heading home. Her eyes were less sunken, less weary, but she’d obviously been crying for hours.

“I saw him,” she had one arm crossed across her waist, propping her elbow up so she could ease her headache with the fingers that weren't holding a cigarette.

“Your son? That’s great!”

“No!” She began crying. "It's not great."

I hate feeling guilty. There's money in the box to count and I'm out here listening to her. It’s not like I started the whole thing to cause pain. The D.I.D. club has its roots in a great idea. Through the miracle of guided mediation we can actually go back to a fixed point in our own history, sort of a take-two of our lives, and change a moment we regret.

“He still dies.” She sobbed so hard I had to hold her to keep her from falling apart right there on the street. I won’t lie, holding her so close really helped me hide the shocked look on my face that my little hokey guided meditation routine worked. I brought her home that night, because you never know where these things might lead. She told me the rest over coffee.

“The first time, I was just so excited to finally have him in my arms."

"You've gone back more than once?" I asked incredulously.

"Yes." She looks down into her black coffee. I should point out that her success points to the validity of the D.I.D. Club but I'll ask for a YELP review later.

"I was so exhausted that first night home from the hospital. Ma--Mark finally went to work. Guests were gone. We named him Jack. We had the crib all set up in his room."

"You were there? You saw all this?"

She nodded slowly, still not looking at me.

"I had the television on in the living room. I don’t know what I was watching, I was so tired. Maybe going back did it, with the guests and all the commotion." She paused to frown inward, I could feel her setting the blame on herself.

"I set Jacky down on the end of the couch, and I lay on the floor beside him. I could have sat there forever just looking at his scrunched up little face blinking at me. And then I lay my head down on the floor, for just a second, and closed my eyes. When I opened them again, I sat up. I just knew. He was turning white again. Just like the first time. I couldn’t move. Mark had to call the police when he got home from work the next day…”

“But you actually went back, Naomi. And it worked.” I said it as much to reassure her as to exclaim my surprise. She nodded anxiously before hiding her face downward once more. I can barely contain my excitement.

“It was like you said. A tunnel. And a light. And I knew I was walking backwards—not like backwards backwards, but backwards through time, you know?” I can only nod to keep her talking. At this point? I’m literally on the edge of my seat. Is this a gold mine I see before me?

“And then… poof. I’m there. Right there back in that old apartment sending Mark off to work like someone just pressed play on a DVD or something. Life like it used to be, before--. And it’s me and it’s Jack. And I know that as long as I have him in my arms, and don’t set him down on that couch… he’s going to be fine and Mark won’t ever…” Sobs make the story dry up for a second. I never asked what happened to Mark. Or her second husband, for that matter. She stopped trying after that, I guess.

“So I hold him in my arms." She shrugs inexplicably to herself. "And I just… look around the old apartment, cause, I mean I haven’t been here in years, except in my memory. It’s funny how some things are exactly as you remembered, and some things are nothing like how you remember, you know? Like I always thought our telephone was red, but it was blue. And it was cordless. And it rings. And I go to answer it still holding Jacky. And it’s my mother. Oh—I haven’t heard her voice in years. And she tells me she thinks she may have forgotten her earring in the bedroom. And without thinking I set Jacky down in his crib and I go look. It’s so instinctual. I was there, in that moment. Whether I still existed here, in this time, I don’t know. But I was there, talking to my mother, who passes away in… well, three years ago from… today. So I go and look for her earring. And I’m gone, maybe, I don’t know, a minute? Less? Cause as soon as I go to look, I remembered from the first time I lived this moment that mom had lost her earring, but it fell out in the car on her way home. I chuckle, in that moment you know, because it’s so useful to have hindsight. And I go back into the living room, and as I’m telling her what happened I freeze. Jacky’s in his crib. Not moving. Like as soon as I set him down he just started to suffocate. And I’m staring at him as my dead mother is laughing because this time she found it; it was in her ear the whole time… not in her car like it was the first time this happened. Such a small, insignificant detail changed. Meaningless. And I’m just staring. And staring. And then… I’m back.”

“Here you mean? In this time?” I’m beside myself. I startle her when I chime in, like I just woke her from a dream. She’s not crying anymore, she’s just staring at the floor nodding her head. And I’m not sure whether to be elated my guided meditation ploy actually worked—at this time, I should mention I hadn’t really been successful in my own attempts at going back, and hadn’t had very many positive testimonials for anyone who’d tried it. But here was this woman telling me the first instance of it ever working, and it had to be the saddest damn thing I’d ever heard in my life. I can sell this. This is money.

So, I consoled her in that half-hearted way. Gave her more coffee, all while trying to figure out how she’d been so successful where I hadn’t. And what would I change if I could go back. She didn’t seem to know how she’d done it, though, which was problematic. It isn’t like she opened up her heart chakras anymore than any of my other clients. She didn’t focus harder, or more simply, or more or less intently on any particular thought over another. Everything she said she did, all my other customers did. So why did she manage to travel through time?

So anyways, she wanted to try again. And, logically, who am I to argue? Another $39.95, and we’re having a similar chat after her second experience. That’s when she started in with the criticism.

“What you’re selling is wrong,” she said.

“How so? You’ve gone back, just as promis-“

“But I can’t change anything! Everything I do differently and it always ends up the same!” She was in more tears than the first time we spoke. There’s a certain moment in which the seller must read the angry buyer, assess the level of anger, and concoct an appropriate method of damage mitigation.

“Now, Naomi,”

“Don’t you dare!" She glared. I lifted my arms to calm her. This is that tense moment where the buyer wants to hit the one who sold them the defective product. First step: find a way, in not as many words, to say buyer beware while keeping the sales pitch intact.

“I’m sorry that you’re experience hasn’t been pleasant. But, I mean, this isn’t an across-the-board problem. I mean,” that’s it, you’re doing fine. Go to the well, and draw something out of nowhere, “look at Curtis.”

“Who?”

“You don’t remember Curtis?" Thank god for Curtis. "Sure, Curtis. He came to the first meeting, remember?” There’s this glimmer of false recognition in her eyes that’s combating her need to call ‘bullshit’ on me, so I need to press harder, scratching my head in an unconscious tell that all of this is literally off the top of it.

“Yeah, Curtis was complaining about all those stock investments he made that turned him flat broke. Remember? He lost his wife and family, his house, his cars, everything. But I mean, look at him now.” How can she argue? There is no Curtis. And if there ever was a Curtis, and he did attend the Do It Differently Club, and he did do it differently, changed his fortune, righted the wrongs, fixed all the things; well kudos to Curtis! Half the premise of the club asserts you won’t even have to show up in the future to attend it because you did the thing you wanted to do differently. Congratulations! You successfully altered the future, and we never needed to meet.

“I don’t remember Curtis,” She said, her argument already weakened by her own emotional state.

“Exactly. Because he did it differently, Naomi.” She didn’t snap, just stared blankly for a moment, arguing silently in her mind. Now to plant the flag. “Look, you’ve had a rough time. Would you like to tell me about this latest experience? We can work through it together.” No one, especially not a chick, can withstand the power of concerted, seemingly earnest sympathy. I could have been clubbing a seal in front of her. It’s called charm, friends. I have over 5,000 followers on my LinkedIn.

Thus disarmed, she cupped the new cup of coffee I made her and whimpered at the metaphysical unfairness of her predicament. It’s rule one, get them to blame someone else.

“Maybe God doesn’t want it done differently,” she trailed off.

“Naomi,”

“Call me Mara,” she looked into the swirl of coffee, “I don't want to be Naomi anymore.”

“Okay. ‘Mara’,” who the hell am I to argue, it’s her forty bucks, “this doesn’t have anything to do with God.” I said. “This has to do with an event in your life you wish had gone differently, right?” She nods softly. “Well maybe the event itself can’t be changed, but something before this event? Like, maybe you’re focusing on changing the wrong thing?” It’s working. This hopeful air starts to overtake her.

“But-- like what?”

“Identifying that focal point isn’t easy. You know the situation better than I do. Maybe it’s a checkup with a doctor. Maybe something should be checked for? Maybe it’s something your son eats? An argument with your husband? You have to realize that time is like a string of causal events,” I’m reaching pretty hard down that deep, dark well of whatever ios inside me that makes my life possible. “One thing inevitably leads to another like chain reactions. You have to learn which part of the chain to affect the change you want to see in your world.” Thank you Mahatma Gandhi, and quotable quotes.

Naomi, Mara, screw the name, what does it matter, she’s customer 1 in my ledger, is deep in thought as I exhale softly.

“I think you’re right,” she murmurs, an epiphany dawning on her. I sat there hoping it would dawn a little faster. There does come a time where you just want the buyer out so you can get some rest, you know?

“Thank you,” she said, rising after setting the coffee down. A resolve was budding in her at that moment, and for a brief moment I felt genuinely helpful.

“You’re going to be okay.” I told her.

“I think so.”

“You’re going to try again?” She nods with a smile growing on her worn features. I’m delighted; she’s buoyed with hope. Everyone’s happy. I can see my future $39.95 materializing already, and I send her off.

And now, we’re here. I’m watching Naomi, or Mara, whatever; get that tissue from sympathizer lady in the second row. Attempt number 5, or 6, maybe 120. Who knows how many at this point, so long as she keeps telling people it works I'm happy. She looks sallow, half starved, uninspired, wearing that ridiculous cobwebby sweater with the baggy pants and the bonnet-thing that cancer patients might wear to conceal the hair they lose.

“The past isn’t meant to be changed,” she speaks like it’s a polemic.

I should point out that attendance has sharply increased each time. Success speaks louder than counter-testimonials, I’m afraid. I make sure to show her my yawn, even ‘inadvertently’ motioning to my watch. It’s an unspoken battle that she’s becoming aware she's losing. I won’t lie, my back’s been up after the first time she complained. She painted her own target on her chest. She’s tried to shatter my credibility, and discredit an otherwise honorable business venture. I made no claims what I'm offering would improve anyone’s life, only that it could be improved. Read the fine print, Naomi, Mara, whatever. I promised life-alteration, and seeing her go from otherwise healthy middle-aged woman to this sallow raggedy rack of bones listlessly trying to convince my paying customers I’m a fraud is proof enough my service performs its promised function.

I was perfectly content to sit and listen. I would have allowed her all the time in the world to hang herself out to dry in front of my customers. I’m all for doling out rope for a person to hang themselves with. All the while I was formulating the most adequate response. But then, the funny thing is, I didn’t anticipate quite how far I’d pushed. Maybe, for future reference, I, we, should do security spot-checks at the door to check for concealed weapons. I mean, really, who figures some broken shell of a human being would have the energy to get a gun license; wait however long it was to get said license; then smuggle it into a public place, right?

(uncomfortable silence)

Yeah. At any rate, that’s basically why I’ve come back here to talk to you. I'm living proof that you WILL actually get to go back in time. Guns don’t travel so well, but this one made it. And, I mean I’m here, not for the reason you, I, initially hoped. But there it is for you. All on the table. And maybe Mara, Naomi when you meet her, was right. Maybe God, or whomever, doesn’t want it changed. Blood should be in our veins not on our hands. But you understand, that customers don’t pay to come to a club that drives people to suicide? So, I’m hoping you find it in your heart to seriously hear what I’m saying to you. To us. To me. Either don’t start that club, or, maybe, re-order our attitude, or market some other way, or--. God knows what. Because, even though I managed to convince everyone Naomi’s, well Mara’s, death wasn’t my fault… well. Just do it differently when it’s your turn, okay? So you don’t have to use this gun like I do.

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