Where are you? The Pioneers Banquet is at 5:30. I've gone ahead. Come as quick as you can.
Missed
her again... The phone rang, but whoever it was hung up by the
time I got to it. I was beginning to feel isolated, and out of
sync with the world. As I raced to get dressed up in my cowboy
clothes for the banquet, I wondered if I might still be stuck in some
other weird time continuum. What if I was, for instance, 5
minutes in the future of everyone. I might never connect with
them again. Then I thought, maybe I've always been five minutes
in the future, since I'm not very connected to anyone anyway.
This thought slowed me up a bit, but my natural buoyant nature
got me out of that philosophical nosedive. I set off for the
Legion Hall where I assumed the dinner was. Assumed was the
operative word, since there was no one there when I got there. At
least there was a note on the door:
Pioneers Banquet moved to the Grange Hall,
due to electrical problem in kitchen.
I
set off into the country, trying to remember where the Grange Hall was.
Since I navigate by landmarks, first I had to remember what the
Grange was near. After driving around for an hour or so, I
remembered it was near the old railroad tracks, so then I located it
fairly quickly. I would have even broken the Chief Guys
Command and asked for directions, but there was no one out to ask...
Unfortunately, they were just finishing sweeping up when I pulled
in the parking lot. I vaguely knew the guy sweeping, so I asked
if he'd seen Alice. Indeed, he remembered her leaving just about
5 minutes ago.
As I proceeded home, I
wondered whether, if I were stuck in some other weird time continuum,
if it was the future, the past, or something other. I was so busy
wondering that I missed a turn or two, and after slowly getting
reoriented, arrived home pretty late. Sure enough, there was a
note from Alice:
I
can see you were home sometime because you moved the other note!
I've gone to bed, but wake me with a good excuse, or I expect to
find in the morning you had a horrible accident , in which case I will
still have mixed feelings about all this.
This
required
some serious thought. Alice thinks philosophy is a wonderful
thing, but she may not accept getting stuck in the present tense or in
the future as valid reasons to blow off a charity banquet. I
seemed to always be about 5 minutes late, which one might interpret as
being stuck in the past. But the fact was, in each of those
occurences, if I could have gotten back into the past 5 minutes,
things would have been fine, so clearly I was stuck in the future...
What's more, I was writing this in the past tense, which means
I'm really even further into the future...
I crept into bed quietly, even though I figured she wouldn't notice I
was there for 5 minutes or so. I tried to get it untangled in my
head, which led to my rapidly falling asleep... When I woke up,
Alice was still beside me. I was so overjoyed, I woke her with a
kiss. Unfortunately, she was a little behind me in waking up, as
she rolled over and went back to sleep. This was nothing new--our
sleep patterns have always been a bit out of sync. But now I
wonder if it's due to one of us being out of place in time...
