Since the Kobayashi Maru's been on my mind lately, I decided to watch the new "Star Trek" movie On Demand last night. It was actually kind of great. But it had a lot of that time-travel stuff that I usually can follow for the first half of a movie, but then loses me because I start thinking too hard about some logical inconsistency and then I get annoyed and obsessive about it.
Anyway, I was thinking about how Spock comes back from the future to help out his younger self and save his planet. This got me thinking about Shakespeare and time travel and how he even had that covered. In Cymbeline, the ghosts of Posthumus' parents come back and change his future, and they've been aging while they've been hanging out on the other side so it's like they're from some alternate time-space continuum. (I swear I'm not a secret Trekkie. I don't really understand where this is coming from. I think my husband slipped me a mickey that will make me only want to see movies with explosions in them and stop dragging him to things like "Precious.")
Acually, I think all of this is on my mind today because it's my birthday, and lately each year feels like I'm creeping closer to the other side myself. What if I could go back and talk to my younger self? Which moment would I try to intercept? Would I beam back to 1983 and make me wear ear plugs to that "Adam and the Ants" concert so that I could get the hearing back in my left ear? (While I was at it, I would tell me that leggings, big belts and shoulder-padded blouses were not a good look for me.) Would I go back to 1986 and tell me that I will care about money in the future and that I should rethink that English major?
Nah. Then I wouldn't be having all this fun. Thanks for reading. And if anyone happens to go back in time and run across a teenager with a Molly Ringwald haircut and elf boots, can you tell her to wear sunscreen?
Monday, December 21, 2009
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happy birthday!!
ReplyDeleteif you see MY younger self in 1983, tell her to rethink the asymmetrical haircut next year, because she is not, in fact, in the Thompson Twins.
This one's for my 1980 self: that cobalt blue long-sleeve velour shirt that worked so well for you in junior high is going to ruin your freshman year of high school, where the temperature inside the building is at least 11 degrees hotter than the junior high, causing you to sweat through the pits and that one weird spot on your back. And yes -- everyone can tell.
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