I was in Target the other day, browsing clearance accessories, when I heard a woman scream at her child a few aisles over:
Mother: I'm NOT kidding! Shut your mouth!
Child: Momma! Momma! But it has dinosaurs on it!
Mother: If you open your f*&%@$! mouth again, I'm going to smack you in the head.
Great Scott! You must be horrified by this story, Marty, as I was. I wish I was kidding--what mother in her right mind speaks to her child like that, let alone in public?
I ignored the disturbing occurrence, and soon found myself in an aisle of bohemian purses and bags, along with some pocketbooks and wallets. The faceless mother let loose another outrageous claim to what had to have been her four-year-old little boy.
You're so stupid; I can't stand you when you whine. Seriously, you're pissing me the f*&% off.
Marty, it took every ounce of my being not to seek that bitch out and punch her right in the teeth. In fact, had it not been for my fiance gently holding the crook of my elbow, I'd probably be in a cell somewhere instead of writing this letter to you. Thankfully I'm able to, because you reminded me of something really important that day.
I know, I know, strange-- seeing as how you weren't even there. Physically, anyway.
You see, I haven't been able to get that "mother" out of my head. How disturbed I was about her actions, her words, her child's future. How growing up without a dinosaur watch, for him, was symbolic of so much more than an ignored request of innocent desire. Where will he be in fifteen years? What if he becomes another painfully accurate story of isolation and loneliness, set to to a well-matched headline on the April 14th, 2029 prime time news? Will the end of his life cost those of many others?
I don't know his name. I never saw his face. How will I know if he turned out all right? Or, at the very least, a little right?
I wanted to go back in time. I wanted to throw that Mommy up against the rack of Target sunglasses and grab her ear and hiss into it, pelting spit pebbles on the side of her face. I wanted to make her feel as tiny as the crumb of pizza crust her son dropped on to their living room carpet last month, the crumb she stepped on, the crumb she punished her son for by sending him to his room without dinner or a glass of juice.
And then, then-- that was when I thought of you.
You went back in time, once. I believe it was to 1955? An elaborate plan was in place, one that would render your father, George McFly, the hero of the hour. Then Biff showed up, nearly causing your entire future to crumble, disappear from pictures, slide through your fingers and off your electric guitar strings.
What if you had been the one to knock his nose into pieces, not your Dad? You, the hero of the hour. Maybe you would still be date-nighted into existence out of pity, but not out of love-- and definitely not out of chivalry. A loveless marriage and a long, neglectful childhood later, you'd find yourself in a basement apartment in a slum neighborhood trying to re-create the flux capacitor, hoping you could travel back in time and take that fist back. You'd give it to George, knowing that from his benefits, you might turn out all right.
Don't you see, Marty? Had I been able to go back, had I been able to relieve my empathetic pain by punching her, I would have inevitably screwed up the space-time continuum of my life. A blank, voiceless, faceless existence would be no existence at all. And maybe I'd have ended up a story on the evening news, May 14th, 2014.
I think of my father and mother, and the fires we built when we went camping as a family. My dad would plug in his decrepit box radio into the electrical outlet and play Oldies cassette tapes, bumping his head while filleting the steak we were soon to cook. I can remember my brother tripping and falling, his hands out in front of him to stave the fall, landing on the hot grate and searing the skin on his hands. My mother felt awful, and tended to him that trip several times a day with aloe and gauze. To my brother, it seemed to be just a boo-boo, but it was a fault, a lack, a mistake for my mother. I'm sure she'd have gladly burned her own flesh instead to take away his pain, but she wouldn't have understood that in his future, my brother would probably need that memory to remind him of how to care for a hurt child, dress his bandages after injury. Hopefully some day I will have a nephew or a niece, and can take a picture, black and white, of Mike snapping off the tip of an aloe plant.
My graduate school, set in the Green Mountains of Vermont, has barn dances every Saturday night in the summer. One particular dance asks its participants to dress up as something or someone that serves as a suppressed desire of sorts, something that each guy or girl wishes to be but never will. I bought a checkered button-down and an orange vest from a second hand store, and was lucky enough to find a skateboard and a child's musical guitar at the Kmart in the city nearby. I asked the DJ to play Johnny B. Goode, and took it upon myself to dance in the middle of a crowd-circle, pushing the buttons on my toy guitar, mouthing the words to the Berry classic.
The next day, my knees were bruised and bloody from skidding on the hardwood. I called my father and told him of my costume, trying my best to explain that I was the star of the show for just a few minutes. I called my mother and asked her what the best ointment was for raw, exposed skin.
There are so many Biffs in the world, and not enough George McFlys. Everyone knows that. It is rare for good to stand up to evil, and even more rare for good to triumph. Martys though-- they're the most important stock character. The people who can pick out the slugs on the tulips, but don't always cast them away with a flick of their fingers.
You see, Marty, those people, our type of people, we take everything in. Born to soak things into our souls, we pick and choose when to act, always taking in each individual experience and using it to create a futuristic photo. One that includes well-fed, often-hugged children, maybe a puppy, one that doesn't disappear by trying to go back in time and change things that hurt. Biffs will always hurt others, and it is our job not to destroy them, but to eventually make them the minority by learning from their mistakes.
Think, McFly. Think. That's what people like us do. And I'm beginning to realize that going back to the future is much more important than being able to erase things, make them blank-- after all, someone's gotta drive the DeLorean.
With 1.21 gigawatts of hope for the future,
Lindsay
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