That place

Last night, while channel surfing, we caught the end of Frequency--that super duper complex time travel mystery thriller where this 36 year old cop, Johnny, learns how to use his father's old transistor radio to communicate with him in the past tense. Him, being his father who died 30 years earlier in a fire. 

Through the use of the transistor Johnny is able to warn his father about the fire and save his life.

How cool would that be?

Except, and this is the complicated part, because his father doesn't die, his mother, who is a nurse, isn't at his funeral, but is instead at work where she saves the life of a man who is a serial killer and who ends up killing her. That's the thanks she gets.

So poor Johnny saves his father, but in turn loses his mother.

So Johnny rewinds again and works with his father, via the magic transistor radio, to find the identity of the ungrateful serial killer before he murders their mother/wife.

They successfully foil the crime and alter their own history and in the end the whole family is alive and well and playing baseball together to a Garth Brooks song.

I like happy endings like that. Especially when Garth Brooks writes the lyrics.

And who wouldn't love to have a magic transistor radio to warn their loved ones of impending doom and gloom? I would.

Or would I?

Just think of all the pain and anguish you could spare people!

I could go back to my parents wedding day and tell my mom DON'T DO IT! It's going to miserable. He's going to cheat and go through long periods of depression. He won't be able to hold a job so there will be no money. What money there is he will spend on drugs. He'll overdose when he's 38, leaving you to raise seven kids by yourself. And his mother will tell everyone he died of a broken heart.

But then maybe I would just keep my trap shut. Because my mom lubbed my dad. Like crazy.

And anyway, in a nutshell it sounds like a really bad marriage, but we don't live in a nutshell do we? If I spared my mom all the pain I'd have to spare her all the joy as well. And the lessons. Nobody would learn any lessons.

(Besides, if my parents never got married what would I write about? Rainbows and butterflies?)

I could also go back to the day my great grandmother Constance got pregnant by he-who-must-not-be-named and tell her DON'T DO IT! It's going to be miserable. You are going to be ostracized by the town. And he-who-must-not-be-named will spend two years in prison with a scarlet letter A tattooed on his soul. Is that what you want? And your father will never speak to you again, even when you are screaming in agony for hours while giving birth. And there will be complications. With the birth. That will change you forever. You will be sick sick sick. And besides the years of headaches and infections your heart will ache in unimaginable ways. For years. You will leave your family and your home town and your daughter and move to California. Eventually you will marry a man you don't lub and then you will die in surgery when you are 33 years old. And your daughter will tell everyone you died of broken heart.

Then again maybe I would just keep my trap shut. After all, I wouldn't have a trap to shut if it weren't for that day. 

Am I right? Or am I right?

And anyway, that's just the bad stuff. That doesn't include all the good stuff. I'm betting she really did lub the man she married. Eventually. 

Maybe it's good we don't get magic transistor radios, huh? 

And maybe it's good Garth Brooks gets to write the happy ending lyrics. 

There’s a moment,
We all come to.
In our own time and in our own space.
Where all that we’ve done,
We can undo,
If our heart's in the right place.

(Thank goodness even stone cold hearts can get to that place.)

This post is dedicated to New England Alison because I've been reading her . . . leave a trail blog and I know she's moving towards that moment.