I have always been fascinated by the subject of time travel, ever since I saw the movie Time After Time -- yes, long before it was a song, that was a movie title. It was about HG Wells traveling into the future in a time machine he built. Great little movie. Came out in 1979, when I was just coming out of the fog of childhood and starting to ponder The Big Questions.
The movie also made me curious to research HG Wells, who was a fascinating guy.
I was telling one of the students I tutor about time travel the other day. “Magic is real,” I said.
He looked confused.
“What we take for granted would be considered magic if we lived 200 years ago.”
He still looked confused, but also interested.
“You know that cell phone in your pocket? Imagine if you traveled back in time a hundred years and could show everyone a working iPhone. They would think you were doing magic. Heck, if you had told me when I was a kid I would one day own a small computer I could carry around in my pocket that could also be used as a phone, camera, calculator, flashlight, etc.? I would have laughed.”
He is 11 years old. He has never lived in a world without personal computers, microwave ovens, and videogames. I never saw a microwave oven or touched a computer until I was in college.
We mostly talk about English and writing, of course, but every once in a while I like to throw in a little history.
I digressed.
Here’s what I want y’all to think about for a minute: Time travel is real.
I think about it sometimes when I talk to my mom.
My mom was hugged by her grandmother, Granny Butler, who was born in 1870. Now Mom hugs me. Mom is a living link to Granny. Michael calls my mom “Granny” because that’s what she wanted her grandchildren to call her, because she adored Granny Butler, her grandmother.
My mother was born into a world before television, before computers, before so much of the technology we take for granted today.
I have the DNA of my parents, who lived through World War II, and I have the DNA of my ancestors who lived through the Civil War. My DNA has traveled through time. My body is its living vehicle for time travel.
I am a living link to the past.
YOU are a living link to the past. We all are links.
I know this may seem ridiculously obvious to most of you, but it fascinates me.
When I open the box that holds the silk handkerchief my granddaddy sent his mother in 1917 when he was in World War I, I feel like a time traveler. When I see myself in the mirror my grandmother used, I feel like a time traveler. When I eat at the table my great grandfather built – as I have eaten there so many times during my 56 years – I feel like a time traveler.
Even if I one day won the lottery and could buy a new house, all my antiques would come with me, and be placed where I could see and use them every day, as I do now. I don’t want a fashionably modern home, with shiny surfaces and furniture that was made 5 minutes ago by a machine. That would feel too sterile and impersonal.
I think one day, possibly in my lifetime, we will be able to travel in time. I really don’t think it’s that far-fetched.
To me, the past is a living thing. It’s all around us. I love the fact that I still use the oak dresser my great grandfather William Hasty made more than a hundred years ago.
I love the fact that I can get in the car and get to Oakland Cemetery in thirty minutes, and walk the paths that were walked by my ancestors more than 150 years ago.
I think if we want to teach kids about history and have them get excited about it, we need to talk about time travel. Not in the theoretical, scientific sense. We need to point out that we are vehicles of time travel – we carry the DNA of all those folks in old photos who lived long ago.
We need to take our children to places like Oakland Cemetery and show them the beautiful graves that look like gardens, and the beautiful sculptures everywhere, and the field where so many unmarked graves are. We need to share with them the stories of those folks buried there. Then we need to point out the city beyond, the huge bustling city with grand tall buildings that were not there even 50 years ago.
Imagine a hundred years from now, when our grandchildren walk through Oakland. Imagine how they will feel?
Time travel is fertile soil for the imagination, and only by planting in that soil will we grow children who love history, who revere the past, and who want to preserve it for future generations.
Oakland Cemetery
the oak dresser Grandpa Hasty built
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