Potholes In My Lawn
Where your Humble Scribe finds the one place in the past he'd been cast out of
The thought experiment for today: you can travel back to any point in your life for 24 hours, and speak to yourself for 60 seconds.
This little experiment serves two purposes, for me. There’s a lot of holes in my memory when it comes to my childhood years. I know I’ve got blocks in place that are protecting me from painful memories, and they’re a constant source of fun for therapy sessions.
There’s one point, however, that I sincerely need to revisit.
I was somewhere between four and six years old. My mother and I were at a convenience store down the street from our house. The details have always been scarce and fuzzy, but a guy held three people, including my mother, at gunpoint for a period of time. I wasn’t in the store - for whatever reason, I was in the car.
I found out much later that my mother knew the guy, they may have been having an affair, he may have been enraged with her. Maybe they were meeting at the store for a smooch, and things went south. I’ve tried to get the answers out of people for five decades, with zero success.
When I get back to that day, I would watch the whole thing unfold. I can’t talk to my mother (in our thought experiment), or anyone else in that time period. I want to know what I was like at that age. What she was doing that day. What caused the guy to snap and bust out a revolver.
As for what I would say to myself, maybe this is where my paradox kicks in. See, during the time when Mom was held in the store at gunpoint, a man walked up to the car and talked to me for a few minutes. Kept me calm. Wanted me to know everything was okay. I remember him, but I don’t remember myself. How did I know to stay in the car? Did I know Mom was in danger? Did she say something to tip me off?
Or did I time-travel back to keep myself safe?
I may not ever be able to unlock that batch of memories, but I can hope.