Well, I’d have to cover the signature with brown painter’s tape. You see, my dad had a customized fly fishing rod, and the manufacturer kindly placed my father’s handwritten signature on the side. Do they even make brown painter’s tape? I know there are blue and funky green colors, but I’ve never seen brown at Lowes. Maybe if they make brown painters tape then time travel would be possible?
Why would I go through all that effort? I have the rod. My father has been dead for over thirty years now. But, I read in one of those blogs, (Popular Science, IFL Science, one of those) that time travel IS theoretically possible. And I may have already done it.
Theoretical science is a bit Meh about three types because it is likely you could, by traveling back in time, create an alternate dimension. You exist in the alternate dimension allowing you to interact with the past but you cannot change it in any significant way. In this instance, the parallel dimension would allow me to move a salt shaker sitting on the dining room table in my parent’s house, but I would not be altering the future because the salt shaker is inanimate. I could, theoretically, hold a conversation with one or both of my parents, but because their timeline is fixed and I am in a parallel timeline, I can’t alter their timeline but I can interact.
Let me explain. The theoretical physicist said we had three concepts of time travel. One involves the paradox, wherein you travel back in time via negative proton displacement. (Uh, okay, let’s leave out the practicalities for now) You change something in history, such as killing Hitler (Let’s Kill Hitler, Dr. Who episode), and thus change the course of human history and possibly prevent your own birth. Or, you travel back in time, but everything is fixed where you bear witness to events but are powerless to do anything other than watch. Meeting yourself might not cause the ultimate paradox and your head does not automatically explode.
So, I can’t go back in time and suggest to my father that he should invest heavily in Apple or that the Cubs finally won a World Series in 2016. But, if I knew the exact date, time, and location, I could go chat with him about absolutely nothing. And yes, I would pay money for the opportunity to talk to my Dad.
What if? What if I’d somehow managed it? What if that feeling of deja vu is nothing more than our future selves returning to the past to talk to ourselves. My father once told me he’d had a strong feeling of deja vu the first time he walked into the gymnasium at his high school in Michigan. He could not explain how he knew the place, only that he did. The gym turned out to be a significant location for my father. His gym teacher was an asshole, who informed my dad that he and his cousin, Richard, were trash and that they’d always be trash good for nothing jailbirds. This teacher pissed my dad off to the point that when he graduated with his medical degree, he wanted to go find that teacher and show him the diploma. But, you see how this gym became a place that ultimately changed the course of my father’s life?
What if he was able to go back in time as an adult and somehow reassure himself? This might explain the deja vu if he had a perfectly innocuous conversation with an adult that felt strangely familiar.
When I search my memories of my childhood, I remember a feeling of familiarity too. When I was roughly 10 or 11 years old, we spent two weeks every summer for about four years in Red River, New Mexico. So, I was approximately 13 the last time we went up there. We spent those two weeks in a cabin owned by another doctor friend of my dad’s. It was a nice cabin, built for skiing vacations in the winter. But, the house was vacant in the summer, and I guess the friend was concerned about squatters, so we were charged with making it look inhabited. My dad wanted to fish, and the river, (which honestly isn’t much more than a largish stream) was stocked with rainbow trout.
It had to be 1979 because I remember listening to Cheap Trick’s Dream Police album over and over. Anyway, the cabin had no television and only a party-line phone for emergencies. So, my options were to read or go fishing with my dad. I had pictures of us, dressed in waders and carrying creels full of trout. I remember I wore a red, white, and blue striped short sleeve sweater, and my hair was cut like Dorothy Hamill’s. On me, it looked like a mushroom cap, with goofy bangs. Anyway, I remember, vaguely, a couple that joined us down at the low water bridge over the stream. They stick out in my memory because they really didn’t seem like fishing people. She had poofy blonde hair, was fat, and carried a fly fishing rod. Her husband seemed older, balder, and walked with a cane. She huffed and puffed along like she’d been running and her husband trailed along behind her, seemingly bemused by something. Strangely, I don’t remember much more about them, except that they were extremely chatty. Well, she was anyway. She spoke to my father for a bit about fishing and that she’d not been fly fishing since she was a girl. I remember she seemed to not know how to cast out either.
I didn’t pay her much attention, and she was more interested in taking pointers from my dad. Because it was innocuous, and a bit inane conversation, I tuned it out and went back to daydreaming. My dad pulled me away, wished them luck, and we tromped into the woods downstream. He said to me, out of earshot, “They’re just churning up the water. They’ve scared off all the fish.”
I remember seeing them upstream of us through a clearing and thought they might be following us. I think my father must have thought so too because we soon left the stream, walked down the road, and headed for the meadow. We caught a lot of fish that day which made my dad happy. I got the impression we were in bizarre competition with the other fishermen to catch the most.
I remember seeing the woman again at another low water bridge as we left for the day. Around four o’clock the heavens would open up and a deluge of rain would fall. It did this every day, and you could practically set your watch by it. I think she yelled at my dad and asked him if he caught anything. He held up his creel and said it was full. She gave us a wave and that was the last I saw of her. I know we hiked back to the cabin at a fast clip and I thought at the time it was to beat the rain, but on further consideration, maybe my dad did not want them to follow us.
I don’t know why he was unnerved by them, but I think he was. Now, I suppose this could be a creepy encounter with a couple who seemed out of place in the woods. Maybe I remember it because it was kind of odd. Maybe I forgot most of the exchange because I was just a kid who lived in the clouds most of the time. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe my child self was not that unnerved because I was brutally naive.
Or maybe some part of me recognized my future self. Maybe she introduced herself as a cousin? I don’t remember but the coincidence would be in and of itself unusual. Maybe my father recognized the fishing rod in her hands. He had yet to commission it, but I could see where he would admire the design. Maybe he noticed the reel and recognized it as his own. I thought they were nice people who really had no idea what they were doing. But, something about them spooked my dad.
I look in the mirror and I see an overweight woman with blonde hair and I wonder. I haven’t yet visited a thrift store to find ill-fitting late 70’s era clothing. I don’t know how to generate negative protons or know how to operate a time travel device. Perhaps that is in my future, where I can return to that point in time, huff and puff my way across the low water bridge, past my soon-to-be teenaged self, to talk to my dad about everything and nothing.
The hardest part will be to not break down in tears. I know I can’t do what I’d want to do, which would be to throw my arms around him and say “Daddy, Daddy, it’s me! I’m here and I love you dearly.” No, the hardest part will be to make an innocuous conversation while I know I am somehow making him uncomfortable. It will be terribly hard not to run after him and my child self, as they scoot off into the woods. My memory of that path to the other low water bridge is extremely vague and I would probably get lost.
The hardest part will be to let them go knowing what I know. But, that is the problem of parallel universe time travel. I wish I could tell myself to cherish this time with my father, that time is always shorter than you think. But, I already know I didn’t and couldn’t anyway. All I could do is stand on the riverbank, with his rod in my hand, with the name covered up with painter’s tape, and talk about the weather, if the fish were biting, and the prospect of rain.
siriusmoonlight 