The American Spectator

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Another Perspective

(Page 2 of 2)

"So 1971 will never be back?"

"No, 1971 will be gone for good." The phone rang and she reached to answer it.

I staggered downstairs with the news. It wasn't that I was so attached to 1971. It wasn't like my access to Oreo cookies or baseball cards was going to be cut off. I didn't see a problem, in theory, with going to 1972, or even 1973, as long as you could return. But it didn't work that way. I kept turning her words around in my head -- "1971 will be gone for good." It seemed impossible that today was 1971 and that tomorrow we could never get back to it. Here would become there. And a darker corollary came to me: this must also mean that I would only be five once, only six once, only seven once, and so on. You couldn't go back, you could only go forward, until you were finished.

That was my initiation into consciousness and gloom. From then on, no occasion big or small was free of that inner voice intoning, "This will pass away and never return," and the struggle between the urgency that seeks to savor the moment and the despair that watches others do so instead. It was something of a consolation, though, to learn that everyone was in the same boat. Even Bozo.

The other consolation is that I might have grounds to sue and collect damages. After all, since I started thinking this way at a premature age, due to no fault of my own, somebody has to be to blame. My most likely target is the Bozo franchise, although my mother, as a sole defendant, might be a more winnable case. On the other hand, her track record as a mother of four other children, none afflicted with melancholia, and her 32 years of good behavior since ruining my life, will weaken my case considerably. But I'll think of something. Perhaps I can sue the estate of Robert Burns, the 18th century Scottish poet who wrote "Auld Lang Syne," or champagne bottlers, or the networks. Somebody's gotta pay up. I'll make that my New Year's resolution.