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A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Dane Allred
Time Travel
I time travel all the time. So do you. Most of us set an alarm to get us up in the morning. Then the next morning, the alarm goes off because you have traveled to the future to remind yourself to get up.
My memory is getting so bad I need to leave myself notes. I’ll put a note on the seat of my car in the morning at work to remind me to do something after work. Many of you use planners to remind us what to do in the future.
What if we read a note from ourselves 50 years from now that said, “Don’t forget to be happy today.”?
I like reminders, except when I don’t want them. Like a reminder to get a colonoscopy, which I know I need but don’t want to be reminded about. I don’t like it when the dentist reminds me to come and get my teeth cleaned. I don’t want to be reminded I need to get my car inspected and registered, but that is a nice reminder.
When I travel in time, most days now it is back in time. I think I am much younger than I really am, and working with young people most of the time doesn’t help. The time travel machine called a mirror is one I really hate. When I walk past it I curse it for the wrinkles it adds to what I still consider my youthful face. But I wouldn’t trade the experiences I have gained for renewed youth.
Reminders can come in many forms. We learn to like our birthdays less and less as we get older, but they really shouldn’t cause us to mourn. We should be thinking about how lucky we are to make it to another landmark. I have some friends who didn’t.
I’ll be sharing another story about Dane Bromley in a minute, but I remember the day I was sitting in my drama class. I was called on the intercom to the office, and my mom was on the phone. She told me Dane had been hit by a truck and killed.
He was walking down the street and a truck hit him. I don’t know if the truck was too far off the road, or if Dane was walking too close to the road. All I know is he was dead, and I had a sickening, sinking feeling and broke out in tears. I hadn’t seen him in years, but we were as close as two guys with the same name could be. I composed myself and went back to class with red eyes.
The next week was a blur, as I went to the church, the funeral, acted as a pallbearer, and only remember a little about the whole thing. I only have a few things left to remind me about the great times we had together, but this memory is like travelling back to junior high.
Since we were both named Dane, not a really common name, we immediately struck up a great friendship. We must have terrorized the halls, because one day the vice-principal came up to both of us as we were sitting in the hall on the floor. He asked us why we had been tormenting our student teachers, who up until that point we both thought really liked us. That just shows how clueless we were, and probably is a good indication of what trouble-makers we were. We had caused her to cry, and we thought she really liked us.
But that’s the way guys are in junior high. We even used to slug girls we liked. What was that about? But time travel also works both ways. I try not to think about how my grandfather always carried a handkerchief and used to blow his nose pretty often. I now carry a handkerchief, and yes, I do blow my nose more often than I like. Leon Trotsky said it this way, “Old age is one of the most unexpected things to happen to a man.” I guess that includes women, too. I’m also guessing Leon Trotsky said this in the last part of his life, not the first.
The point of all the rambling is that we are on a journey where we get one day at a time, and most of us take it for granted. As Henry David Thoreau said, we should not get to the end of our life and discover we had never lived.
Let us live so when our daily reminder to get up in the morning goes off, whether it’s an alarm, the sun or something else, we acknowledge the fact. Let’s live, I mean really live, and recognize today is the only day we have been given.
As Horace said, "Seize the day".
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