How I found myself Back to the Future

I finally got a couple of well deserved days off this week…and I was so incredibly tired! I didn’t even care that it was Saturday, which has always been chore day. I didn’t even care that the kitchen floor was a mess –and filthy floors are something that I hate.

So we ended up at Mom and Dad’s, being lazy on the couch. Sick of watching endless hours of Spongebob and icarly, we finally wrested the remote from Toddy. It’s comical trying to find a TV show that everyone in the room could agree on! We finally landed on a “Back to the Future” marathon.

Tux immediately launched in to seventeen reasons why time travel is impossible or screwed up, and specifically why “Back to the Future” doesn’t work. At first, we laughingly disputed his reasoning (most of which came from a cracked.com article on time travel), but eventually gave up. Time travel is highly unlikely simply based on the fact that no one can define the rules. That’s my take on it.

It got us discussing how Michael J. Fox was concerned about BTFII because they would be overlaying footage of him at nearly 30 with footage of him at merely 25. Poor guy! Tux mentioned that the 47 year old Marty McFly bore NO resemblance to the now 49 year old Fox, and thankfully so! McFly was a loser, and of course bore the wear and tear of such a life. Fox has not had such a life (he has led an amazingly good life, thanks to his attitude and choices), and looks pretty darn good, I’d say.

It was during the scene in which Marty’s 40-something mother is stumbling around the suite in her sequined gown and humongous chest that it dawned on me. I am her age.

When the BTF movies came out, I was at THAT age. I thought that Marty McFly was hot. I was young and wild and loved the movies because they made you look to the future and where you might be and what you might be doing, how your current choices and activities may determine that future.

Somehow, I suddenly find myself on the other end of the time-space continuum! I was sitting there with my late-teenager son. I was no longer Marty’s potential girlfriend, but his mother. It cast a decidedly different light on the movies!

I’ve had the hardest time with this last birthday. I’m not sure what it is…but I’m realizing that I’m on the downhill slide. I am finally feeling like an adult – but it’s only been a couple of years since I’ve felt that way. And now I’m running headlong into old age!

It didn’t help that I ran into an old boyfriend at the grocery store recently. He was quite a bit younger than I was, and my parents where aghast that I would chase such a young one. He was always charmingly good looking, and had a boyish charm that I found attractive.

Flash forward some 25 years, and here we are, talking about our grandchildren and the late in life babies that we had each had. All that I could think of was that he was lined and distinguished looking with his sandy grey hair. OH MY GOSH. What happened???

How is it that one day, you feel young and vital, and the next, you have one foot in the grave?? My dad just turned 64 – and it seems that every year, I get closer and closer to his age. One day, I might catch up. How does that happen?

When I was hired for my current job, they conducted panel interviews for the applicants. One lady looked at my resume and asked if I had attended the local high school. “Oh,” I said excitedly, “Did you have kids that went there?” Silly me. She said slowly, “No…but I did.” I then had to backpedal quickly and honestly tell her that I forget that I’m as old as I am! I see someone my age and think that they are so much older…

My boss seemed to have so much more experience and I assumed that he was years older than me. We acted on this premise for nearly a month before I got into a discussion with him and discovered that he was less than a month older than me. One of the girls that I work with reminds me frequently that I am old enough to be her mother.

And you know what really rankles me? I thought that at this age, I’d be a lot smarter. I imagined that I’d be wise and graceful and…distinguished. But no, I’m still hanging on by a thread, figuring it all out.

If I could go back, what would I tell myself at 18? What would I warn me about, and what would I leave myself blissfully unaware of?

I know. I’d sell myself a line of bull and say that at 40-something, I know the meaning of life. I know how to do anything. I know the answers to everything. And I’d remind me that I’m old enough to be her mother. When she asked how to get from there to here, I’d smirk as I got back into the DeLorean.

Let her figure it out for herself!