This appointment occurs in the past

Gwyneth Paltrow had her Sliding Doors.
Adam Sandler did it in a Click.
Bullock and Reeves are using a Lake House this summer.
And poor Jimmy Stewart had to jump off a bridge!

I wonder.

Could I turn back the clock?  Get to you... back then... And see what might have unfolded. 

Today, I imagined my way to open the "Gates" of time:  Microsoft Outlook.

So I opened my Calendar, and started clicking my Windows Wayback Machine backward on the month view in the upper right corner.  Back... back... but how far???

• Last week: Maybe I could win the Lotto. 
• 1987:  Getting closer.  Graduating college.  There are at least a hundred roads arrayed like a sunburst from this moment.  
• 1981:  Deep into geekdom, but pivotal.  

So I picked March 1981... opened Outlook... and when I picked a random date, it actually brought up the month as it was.  [This is getting good.]

Could I?  I stared for a moment.  Then moved the cursor to the 'File' menu.

'New Appointment'
'Subject:'  Your name
'Location:'  Not many options.  I don't even have my license yet... Pretty much your high school or mine.  Let's go with a party thrown by a mutual friend.

'Start Time:'  Saturday, March 7, 1981, 9:00 pm [Frees up a possible St. Patrick's Day date.  Another place I'll be on firm ground.]
'End Time:'  I'm leaving this blank.
'Show Time As:'  Busy

'Save and Close'

The arrow is poised.  The cursor is blinking.

Now what? 

This started as a daydream, but what do I do now??  Do I set the appointment and see what happens??  Seeing is knowing.  But is knowing better than wondering?? 

I don't want to ruin what time has brought us individually...   

I don't want to take away the things that made our paths cross when they did... or blow the chance that they will cross again... 

I don't want to advance the calendar by 20 or 30 years... and it's not becasue Outlook's Calendar won't go that far... I just couldn't handle the future if your number disappeared from my Contacts... and couldn't handle the present if I saw that your number ends up the same as mine.

I wonder.  Yes, I wonder. 

I know I shouldn't.  But I do.

Do you?

'This appointment occurs in the past' flashes across the top of the screen in yellow.

I know.  That's the whole point.

'Save and Close'

The arrow is poised.  The cursor is blinking. 

Aw, Billy...

He... is leaving.

The Fifth Beatle is Gone.

I think I liked him better than Ringo, too. 

Billy Preston.  The guy who, as a kid, supposedly hung out on Ray Charles' front porch listenting to him play.  The guy whose keyboards can be heard all over Ray's last CD.  The guy whose keyboards absolutely MADE the song 'Get Back' get up and groove, up there on the rooftop of Abbey Road studios.  And then there was the song that's been all over the radio today... Sing it with me:  "Nothin from nothin le^eeeeeeeeeeeeaves nothin!"

Sgt. PrestonI first noticed Billy in 1978 when he, Aerosmith, Alice Cooper, and Steve Martin (oh yeah... and the Bee Gees) turned Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band into a lame story line.  God knows, the movie was tough to take, but the BEST song in the movie.  THE BEST, was Billy as Sgt. Pepper, belting out 'Get Back' at the end of the flick.  (Runner up:  George Burns singing 'I'm Fixing a Hole.')  

It wasn't until years later that I saw "Let it Be."  And if anyone else has seen this pissing match of a movie... God, they were so young... Billy is the only one who has his sh*t together all the way through.  He and George, speaking of which, that was the last time I saw Billy... in the Concert for George.  (If you like anything Harrison, it's a must-see.)

Aw, Billy... 59 is way too young to die.  Take my word for it.  But as the label on the '45 says, maybe That's the Way God Planned it.  Idaknow... Either way, thank you, Sergeant Preston!  And Godspeed. 

Naiad

I just can't let go of the thought
That I want to hold your hand.

[Scrawled on the napkin I just found at a DC bar.  Next to a plastic mermaid in an empty glass.]

Velocity. Serendipity. Proximity. Eternity.

It's never what you plan for...

Three people.

One automobile.

One bright Easter Day in New York...

All came crashing horribly together at 2 pm, Eastern Daylight Time... in the Bronx... leaving one of those people, a toddler, dead in the arms of the second person, his Mother; at the hand of the third.

Velocity. 

Put the variables on a sheet of paper.  The people, the hour, the minivan-traveling at 60 feet per second, the bullet-traveling at 3,000 feet per second.  You could combine those variables a thousand thousands of times and NEVER get them to add up to yesterdays devastating result.  NEVER!!!!  NEVER.  Never.

Serendipity

Well, maybe once.

Serendipity sounds like such a fairycakes-and-tea word, but it's not.  It's cruel.  Oh, it's cruel.  Right-click on the word in Word, and you get synonyms that fill the news accounts of David Pacheco's Easter Sunday:  Providence.  Fate.  Destiny.  Coincidence. 

Young, precious two year-old David Pacheco, enjoying Easter with his Mom and sisters, was on his way to an Easter celebration.  He said he wanted ice cream.  He never had a chance.  Chance.  That's another word for serendipity.  Another brutal word. 

You never see it coming, do you?  It's never what you plan for.  David was strapped into his car seat, in a vehicle equipped with the greatest array of safety equipment The Experts recommend: antilock brakes, airbags front and side, traction control.  Yet who could have imagined the horrible sequence of events already under way--the timing of a party, the flow of traffic, the turning of traffic lights, the building of an argument, the pulling of a trigger, the passing of a car--that would end with a bullet piercing a car door and shattering a family?  Without mercy.  At.  That.  One.  Moment.  The whole idea behind placing your child into a car seat is that they're supposed to come out in the same condition as when you bucked them in.  It's in all the brochures.  It's the way things are supposed to happen. 

Proximity. 

Tear off a new worksheet.

Five people.

One automobile.

One bright Easter Day in New York.

For this family, sweeping blithely within twenty minutes and two miles of the killing fields that claimed David, the odds played out differently.  They made it through their drive down the Henry Hudson Parkway to The Battery to spend Easter with an old green French woman who hangs out in New York Harbor carrying a torch .  They dressed.  They drove.  They celebrated Easter in New York.  But they made it home.  Safely.

Eternity.

Forevermore, I will wonder why one family is so swiftly and indiscriminantly consigned to face the rest of their days on Earth without their beloved child while another family with a variance of two miles and twenty minutes can have the calculation come out differently.

One child meets a bullet.  Three other children--my children--end up having ice cream. 

And I, among others, am shaken to the core.

I was just wondering

What did the people depicted on these plates have on THEIR plates?

The Brigadoon Friendship

Brigadoon is a story of two Americans who, hunting in the Highlands of Scotland, stumble on the enchanted village of Brigadoon, which emerges from the mists for a single day, once every 100 years... 

While the rest of the world speeds by, Brigadoon stays virtually unchanged; frozen in the mists of time. 

Such a treasure is the Brigadoon Friendship...  preserved by the passage of years; unburdened by the daily trading of water cooler gossip; invisible to the speed dial, but marked instead by the milestones of annual birthday cards and calls, five year reunions, and the deliciously rare unplanned crossing of paths in a small, small world. 

Some aquaintances are plated by proximity and frequency:  the coworker, the parents of your kids' friends, the other familiy in the carpool.  But the value of the Brigadoon Friend is solid gold.

Of my Brigadoon Friends, three come to mind.  Our paths and day-to-day adventures led to opposite corners of the Earth.  Yet our reunions, because they are free of the march of the hours and the drama of the days, are about the richness of life and the rarity that is a true friend.  And in those reunions the intervals of time disappear like fog in the strenghening morning sun. 

So today, a wee dram for the Brigadoon Friend!

May we be happy - and our enemies know it!

And may ye ne'er want a frien' or a dram to gie him.

And now there are two

I'm jonesin' for some twisted steel, and I've got it bad.

I have sat at nine desks in 19 years since entering the workforce... eight of which had been someone else's first.  Today is the first time I've ever had to order a box of these.

EVER. 

I'm down to the last two, now, and they're an unmatched set.  One "normal" paperclip, and one small blue one.  [I hate those.  They're not real paperclips.  They're for people who have "Hang in there, baby." posters and unicorn mugs.  I hate those even more!] 

Here's the point:  I've always been on the receiving end of those little metal nuisances sent via interoffice mail by nameless, faceless others.  They poured in from everywhere, overrunning everything in sight.  It was an embarassment of riches.  Until now...

Now there are two...  The office supply order doesn't come in 'til Tuesday... and I've got THREE MEMOS to get out!!!  Wait!  I think I spotted one in the hallway near the elevator!  And there are two more in that paperclip holder thingy on the copier.  [Is it hot in here???]  Wait, Julie's out today.  She wont miss a couple.  I'll just score a few to get me through.  Hahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!   But it's not like I've got a problem or anything. 

Come Tuesday, everything will be fine.  It's just one little nickel box.  I can handle it.  Yeah, sure I can.  I can switch to a stapler, or scotch tape.    I can quit any time I want to...  

How my morning turned on a Penny

Why is it that just one song--applied at the right moment--can make all the difference in the world? 

Monday began, in the Southwest corner of the Northeast United States, with fog and 40 degrees at 0-Dark-Thirty hours.  This is after a weekend featuring my daughter accidentally knocking in a couple of tiles into the bathtub wall (a good sign for her future ability to fend for herself on dates many, many years from now).  Unfortunately, this one act by the Apple of My Eye revealed a startling Incongruity-in-Grout:  Wet drywall.  I mean, drywall is supposed to be dry.  That's why they call it that!!!  Well, scratch beneath the surface of a 40 year-old house with a 40 year-old tub and 40 year-old tile... and you have a long-avoided bathroom remodeling project kicking off whether you want it to or not.

Monday dawned needing a recasting of the mood, if not the shower wall. 

Then, on queue, enter XM Radio with the RX I needed... My day turned on a "Penny"--quite literally--with the buoyancy and Bach trumpet "Penny Lane."  That was it!  The fog lifted, the sun came out, and the Beatles Made a little Birdhouse in my Soul*. 

It worked so well, I threw in Sgt. Pepper's "Good Morning," as a chaser... cut through traffic like a pro and came into work with a post for the blog! 

This day might not end so badly after all!

(*TMBG is my "In Case of Emergency, Play This" CD.)

From today's headlines

Ripped from this morning's edition of the Hartford Courant:

"Unruly young people kept Manchester police and the security staff at Buckland Hills mall busy Saturday night."

I'm trying to imagine the conversation on the police radio:

"Ida know, Sarge.  So far, they're still ruly and kempt, but I think things are starting to change.  Better send backup."

[Got any other "un" words that make no sense??  Dont' be abashed, post 'em here!]

H.E.L.P. (23 on Six-Eight-Four)

I saw irony today, on Route 684 Southbound in New York.  More on that in a sec...

Nearly every faith/culture has a story about helping another in need.  The Good Samaritan springs to mind.  

New York's version is the HELP truck--Highway Emergency Local Patrol.  On my commute down I-684, there are three of them: the 21, 22, and the 23.  When I see them far off down the highway, I play HELP Truck Roulette and try to guess which one it is.    

Today, I saw HELP Truck #23 on the right shoulder of the southbound lanes, sitting alone.  "Just waiting for the next rescue," I thought.  But as I approached, something appeared wrong.  Very wrong...

There, where the left rear wheel should be, was a JACK... and a hub.  The Two-Three was stranded... broken down in the breakdown lane.  The driver was in the cab.  HELPless.    

Who helps the HELPer? 

Apparently, this morning, no one.  Car after car after car... some of whom, I'll bet, have even been rescued by the Two-Three... whizzing by.  Irony.   

Who helps the HELPer? 

You and I do.  That's who.  And here resideth today's lesson:  Help somebody today.  Be it large or small.  Help somebody.  Along your journey today, tomorrow, you'll see someone who'll need a hand, an encouraging word, a target, a shoulder, a shot in the arm, or maybe a kick in the a**.  Help them.  Chances are you'll be doing something that brings you a bit closer to the Divine ... however defined.  

Touch a soul.  Help the Two-Three find its wheel again.  And Godspeed.