The average, ignorant (and I do mean “ignorant” in the nicest, most flattering way possible) person reading this blog might not realize the ironic nature of the title for this post. It’s ironic because the fantasy-inspired idea of time travel doesn’t mix with my disinterest in all things science fiction and other-wordly. I’m not exactly a devotee of the fantasy genre. I prefer to remain in the real world devoid of ghost, goblins, hobbits,magic and general space travel. I don’t even like animated movies. I know. It’s sounds cruel, harsh and somewhat unpatriotic perhaps, but as far as I’m concerned, Nemo, as cute and adorable as he might be to the average person, can just keep on swimming into the underwater sunset.
The reason for the subject of “time traveling” is that is just what I did the other day . . . by looking through a flock of old church pictorial directories. It was quite the entertaining journey. Should the photography business ever become obsolete, it’s nice to know that Olan Mills can venture into extortion and blackmail and still turn quite the handsome profit. While walking through the 70’s, I half-expected to hear the page shout out, “Come here, Starsky, I need you.” There was lots of brown leather and hair. I don’t remember all of my history lessons from the decade, but perhaps I’m just forgetting that along with the energy crisis of Carter’s administration, there was also a serious shortage of usable razors and an unfortunate and prolonged barber’s strike. Moving into the 80’s, I noticed how the funky sweater industry must have blossomed as well as the aerosol hair spray business.
In all seriousness, it was quite interesting to look at a single church through the pages of twenty years worth of pictorial directories. It was a like a living travelogue of stills from history. Families both grew and shrank, with some clans being more fertile than rabbits, or so it seemed. It was quite fun to notice the single adults who got their own, enjoyable solo shots in one edition and then, in the subsequent years until the next edition, found each and then shared the same square the next time around. Through it all, the faithfulness of God seemingly seeped through each page, the generations of faith simply morphing into one another through the visual passage of time.
It also inspired me to do some more time traveling on my own. This afternoon as we prepared for a little family ice cream outing, I threw on a t-shirt and got ready to go. It happened to be a t-shirt from the late 90’s XXL phase that I went through. With my new slimmed-down body, it swallowed my slender frame and provided room for a few more patrons as well inside the fabric. Thus, Carla wanted me to put on something a little more form-fitting. As chance would have it, I happened (courtesy of my sister Sara) to have in my dresser a Boston Celtics tank top from my days in junior high, and, as further luck would have it, it still fit perfectly, nice and snug, just like a cocoon might feel to a caterpillar.
We ventured out and, apparently, time travelers are quite the object of curiosity. In the grocery store a couple of shoppers gave me a puzzled look and a bit of a laugh. I’m not sure of the reason. Perhaps they are not Celtics fans or perhaps my Kelly green tank didn’t match my brown shorts or perhaps my farmer’s tan hurt their eyes. Of course, there is the distinct though remote possibility that I have a tad bit more chest hair than I did in junior high and the low-cut tank made the salt and pepper tufts of chesty follicles protrude over the neck line like Don King peeking over a fence. Like I said, the possibility is remote but indeed possible.
And thus, my adventure in time traveling was brief but enjoyable. Next time though I think I’ll do my decade hopping by watching an old rerun of The White Shadow or Little House on the Prairie or some other non-animated film.
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