You Can’t Go Home Again.

“Walking Distance” is one of my favorite episodes of The Twilight Zone. In the episode, Gig Young plays Martin Sloan, an advertising executive who decides to visit his childhood home after he stops to service his car during a cross-country road trip.

The service station is only walking distance from his hometown, a place he hasn’t visited since he was a child, so he takes the journey by foot.  At first Sloan marvels at how little has changed in his hometown. Everything from the prices at the drugstore to the buildings on the streets seems to be exactly as he remembered them. It isn’t until he sees a very familiar looking boy that he realizes he has somehow journeyed back in time and is now looking at himself as a young child.

Sloan, worn down by the hard, work centric life of a successful business man, is struck by the incredible gift that has been given him — a chance to leave the hustle-and-bustle of his adult life behind and recapture the whimsical joy of his youth. It isn’t until he’s face-to-face with his childhood that he realizes just what he’s been missing all these years. Now he’s desperate to recapture his youth — even if it means pushing his younger self out of the way to do so.

It’s at this point where Sloan is confronted by his father — a man struggling to process the fact that his young son’s future self has somehow traveled back in time. I’m such a fan of this particular passage of dialogue; I’m going to reprint it whole:

Robert Sloan: Martin.

Martin Sloan: Yes, Pop.

Robert Sloan: You have to leave here. There’s no room, there’s no place. Do you understand that?

Martin Sloan: I see that now, but I don’t understand. Why not?

Robert Sloan: I guess because we only get one chance. Maybe there’s only one summer to every customer. That little boy, the one I know — the one who belongs here — this is his summer, just as it was yours once. Don’t make him share it.

Martin Sloan: Alright.

Robert Sloan: Martin, is it so bad where you’re from?

Martin Sloan: I thought so, Pop. I’ve been living on a dead run and I was tired. And one day I knew I had to come back here. I had to get on the merry-go-round and listen to a band concert. I had to stop and breathe, and close my eyes and smell, and listen.

Robert Sloan: I guess we all want that. Maybe when you go back, Martin, you’ll find that there are merry-go-rounds and band concerts where you are. Maybe you haven’t been looking in the right place. You’ve been looking behind you, Martin. Try looking ahead.

This episode touches on a lot of the same feelings and emotions I discussed in my entry about “The Sixteen Millimeter Shrine.”

I too have spent much of my life looking behind me instead of looking ahead. When I first watched this episode a few years back it was as if I had experienced my own set of scales falling from my eyes. I had a mini-epiphany and realized just what it was that I needed to change in my life and why it was so important I do so.

That’s what I love about The Twilight Zone — the fact that an episode fifty years old can still hold the same amount of emotional resonance today as it did when it first aired.

“Walking Distance” is the Twilight Zone episode I find myself revisiting the most. Whenever I’m feeling particularly blue or helpless and need a reminder of what it is I need to be accomplishing with my life, I’ll pop in the episode. Without fail, Rod Sterling’s words in “Walking Distance” give me the push to get off my ass, stop dreaming of the past and start digging towards the future I’ve got waiting for me.

Read more adventures in the Twilight Zone

Stuck in a moment you can’t get out of.

Ida Lupino stars in the Twilight Zone episode “The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine” as Barbara Jean Trenton, an aging film starlet who hides from the world at large — lost in the memories about the Hollywood of yesterday.

Ignoring the fact that Lupino was only 41 when she played an actress put out to pasture, the episode is quite good. Barbara practically lives in her private screening room — rarely venturing out beyond the safety of the flickering of film projected against a white screen.

In an effort to lure Barbara back into the real world, her agent Danny Weiss (played by Martin Balsam) invites one of her old co-stars to visit her. This visit from her former flame (played by Jerome Cowan) ends up doing more damage than good once Barbara sees that her once leading man has now gone bald and manages a chain of grocery stores.

Barbara seeks a way to hide from the ravages of time. She eventually finds her escape — literally vanishing into her old films; a place where time stands still and memory is the only constant.

I’ve always been one to wax a bit too nostalgic. If there’s one thing I waste more time doing than anything else, it’s reminiscing about the past and pining for a way to change it.

This unhealthy behavior (and it is unhealthy, as Rod Sterling’s episode clearly points out) has plagued me for years — no matter how much I try my best to will change. At the same time, though, my obsession with the past has also been my greatest strength as a writer. My best stories have been written about my childhood or friends long gone. This could be because everything seems cleaner and more neatly packaged when viewed in hindsight.

A story, when seen together with its conclusion, always seems more poetic or meaningful than whatever struggles you are currently dealing with. While in the midst of it, my life seems like a mess of tumultuous waves and circling sharks. I’m not sure how the present will turn out but the past is something I know I survived.

It’s not like I had a rosy childhood. I look back at my youth with a mixture of regret and embarrassment. Read any of the stories in this blog’s archive and you’ll know what I’m talking about. I did and said a lot of stupid things growing up. Why then do I wish to escape to it like Barbara vanished into her private silver screen?

Mostly to change it.

My idea of heaven is a restart button. As soon as I die, I’d like to find myself back at the start of the game — now with the added knowledge of where the shortcuts, hidden bonus and extra lives are hidden. I want to be able to relive my life — but done right.

That’s a fantasy, though. I’m well aware that restart buttons are rare and never all-encompassing. I’m stuck with the past I’ve lived — so why relive it every night as I toss sleepless in bed? Agonizing over my mistakes aren’t going to change them — I’ve made them and obsessing over them is only going to cost me sleep and force me along the path towards making more mistakes.

I know all these things yet I remain stuck in a stage of forced-nostalgia. There are days where I’d love nothing more than to escape into my own private screening room — hiding from the world and surrounding myself with my own “best-of” clip reel.

I’m not sure how to take the end to this particular Twilight Zone episode. On one hand, I can accept the fact that Rod Sterling didn’t mean for Barbara’s fate to be something healthy and desirable. She’s stuck in a state of suspended animation — never changing but never growing.

A part of me, though, wonders if this is so bad?

Read more adventures in the Twilight Zone

In which a feral dog turns childhood enemies into friends

During our walks home from school, OJ and I would often goad each other with outlandish claims. One of us would declare that he was a master of martial arts and the other would counter by claiming the ownership of authentic nunchuks. I would bet him I could balance on an irrigation pipe longer then he could and he would respond by challenging me to a foot race. Our competitive nature led us to engage in many duels — from barbwire fence hopping to impromptu wrestling matches. It was this proclivity towards one-upping the other that led me to confront a stray dog.

During the mid-90s there was an infestation of feral dogs that lived in the outskirts of my neighborhood. Since the residential area was still being developed and there were acres of mesquite tree brush and vegetable crops to hide in, the city’s wild dogs were attracted to the neighborhood like moths to a flame.

Occasionally a stray dog, searching for a drink of water, would cross paths with those of us who walked home from elementary school since a good portion of the journey followed alongside an irrigation ditch turned creek. Every time we encountered a dog, OJ would tense up and stand perfectly still as if he were hiding from a T-Rex. I noticed OJ’s behavior and thought it odd since his family owned a trio of the most vicious Chihuahuas that were ever hatched. Instead of seeing a boy rightfully afraid of wild dogs, though, I saw an opportunity.

One afternoon as we walked home from school, a large dog wearing a bandana around his neck came bounding out of the brush with his tail wagging. While OJ froze on cue, I bent down and started slapping my hands on my knees — whistling for the dog to come on over. Having gotten the mutt’s attention, I glanced over to see OJ’s reaction and was surprised to see he had disappeared. Since the dog was blocking the path to our houses, OJ had decided to escape a different way — he had climbed onto an irrigation pipe and was straddling it as if he were riding a horse.

I started laughing. What was there to be afraid of? It’s not like we were dealing with Cujo here — the dog was wearing a bandanna for crying out loud!

As I turned away from OJ to look back at the dog, my laughing suddenly stopped. Instead of the joyful grin of a puppy wanting to play, the dog’s mouth was fixed in a snarl as he approached. Less then a yard away, the dog started to bark at me as he ran at full pace. Being the chicken-hearted wuss I am, I immediately dropped my backpack next to OJ’s and ran over to the irrigation pipe. Soon, both OJ and I were sitting atop the pipe watching as the dog growled at us from the creek bank.

While McAllen is a dry city, the creek luckily had enough water to discourage the dog from leaving dry ground. Unluckily, the dog had the patience of a fisherman and planted himself on the dirt to wait for us.

OJ and I sat on the pipe for almost an hour while we waited for the dog to leave. As we sat, we started to talk. At first, our conversation dealt almost exclusively with what an idiot I was for antagonizing the pooch. Eventually, though, we got to talking about other stuff and discovered that we had more in common then just living in the same neighborhood. By the time the dog had gotten bored of waiting for us to come ashore and had walked off — OJ’s lunchsack in mouth — we were no longer bitter rivals. As evidenced by him pushing me off the pipe and into the water because I caused him to loose a lunchsack, we weren’t exactly friends yet either.

Read more stories of my childhood

I really hated riding the school bus as a kid.

From the vinyl seats that stuck to my legs when it was hot outside to the overcrowded conditions that left me shoved against a window like a Garfield the Cat suction cup cling-on (or worse, left me sitting in the aisle), the school bus was a festering pool of unwanted social interaction.

If it was the bus itself that I hated with it’s noxious smell, bumpy ride and broken windows, though, it was the people inside the bus I despised. There were the older kids — bullies who played keep away with my books or threw my pens out the window. There were the obnoxious bus drivers — always insisting on playing the same sappy tejano music day after day and dispensing inappropriate advice like they were a fortune cookie with a drug problem.

Worse then the bus and worse then the people, though, was the length of the trip itself. For some reason no matter where my parents lived, our house was always the last stop on the bus ride home. In elementary school, it would take over an hour just to get to our neighborhood — putting me in the position of missing my favorite after school cartoons.

Poring salt on my transportation-induced wounds, there were few ways to pass the time on the bus. Electronic devices like Gameboys or Walkmen were outlawed. There wasn’t enough room to read without risking the wrath of a seat neighbor with an elbow in his face. I didn’t have anybody to talk to because none of my friends rode the same bus. The best way to pass time, sleeping, was a risky choice.

A heavy sleeper, if I dosed off on the bus, there was a good chance I would miss my stop and wake up as the driver was pulling into the bus barn. It happened more then a few times — despite the fact that my neighbor was sitting next to me and could have very well have woken me up as she got off the bus.

It’s no wonder, then, why I decided to start walking home.

My mother didn’t like the idea of me hoofing it home instead of riding the bus. I guess she thought I would become the plot line for an episode of “Law and Order: SVU” or something. Or maybe she simply knew that if I got home too early I would stuff my face with junk food from the pantry. Looking back, maybe she was on to something.

Despite her concerns for my safety, I walked home every chance I got. I didn’t do it alone either.  By the third week of my homeward pilgrimage, I had become part of a caravan of like-minded neighborhood boys. A group of us had started to make the journey together, taking the mile-long hike at a leisurely pace and B.S.ing one another as young boys are apt to do.

We would roughhouse, crack wise and tell the dirtiest jokes our fifth-grade minds understood (which are, to say, not as dirty as the jokes today’s fifth graders can recite). It was by taking these trips home that I made a friend named OJ.

The two of us, having lived on the same street for about a year, had encountered each other before. My interactions with OJ, though, were rarely civil. Between beating each other with steel construction bars and making fun of each other’s mothers, we were fast becoming archenemies.

Our friendship was born of three chance encounters with canines.

Read more stories of my youth

Home is where the mess is.

In thinking about a topic to write about today, a few idea nuggets sprang to mind. Nothing, though, grabbed me by the metaphorical balls.

That usually means it’s time to talk about the subject that’s most on my mind right now: me — today and tomorrow. By tomorrow, I don’t mean the far-flung future where I will be an superstar pissing on the peons as I fly overhead in my shining new hover-car. I’m talking about a future that exists a month from now. Who will I be? Where will I be? What will I be doing?

So many questions that you would think I have an answer for.

I don’t, though.

Not really.

I’m sitting in my room surrounded by boxes. I began packing my room a few months ago (it always pays to get a head start) but I only recently started consolidating the boxes along with my furniture in a pile in a corner of my room. The purpose is to ascertain the exact size of my possessions and to get an approximation of what size vehicle I will need to move. The result is a sinking sadness. I have lived in my duplex for two years.

It’s seen some exciting stories and some sad days. I’ve laughed and I’ve cried (not the manly tears that accidentally leak while pumping weights; I’m talking about big sissy sobs). The carpets are stained with proof of the fun that’s been had. Beer stains mingle with pre-leagal drinking age soda marks. A dark splotch that used to be rabbit urine is only a few feet away from bright red vomit stains. A bloody handprint marks the stairway. Tiny dart holes litter the walls. I was moving an entertainment center and I found a homework assignment from a history class I took two summers ago.

Today, while sitting amid the evidence of my past two year’s negligence in cleaning, I was embarrassed when I was interrupted from watching television by two prospective leasers led by a real estate agent. The agent was hoping to lure these young men into singing the lease to my soon to be vacant duplex. While there are currently only three guys living in the duplex (at one point, it felt like we had six people living in the pad), the place looked like it had just hosted the area homeless convention. Beer cans littered the floor. Dirty underwear hung from doorknobs. Even dirtier dishes were piled in the sink.

Home sweet, dirty home.

Despite my embarrassment at watching the real estate agent fluster about trying to explain that the duplex would be much cleaner after we moved out, I was struck with a sense of homesickness two weeks before I actually left home. Despite the hefty rent and impossible to keep clean nature of the beast, I have grown to love this duplex. Fun memories don’t grow on trees. They are as hard to come by as excuses as to why there is a knife-sized hole in the AC unit.

I don’t know where I’ll be two weeks from now, but I know it will be hard to recapture the sense of belonging that I’ve felt in my duplex. It’s the kind of feeling that can only come after a long day of work and school and nothing seems as attractive as a cold shower and a soft bed. It’s the kind of feeling that lingers in the air as four roommates sit around a living room and bullshit with each other about our sexual histories (or lack thereof). It’s the kind of feeling that you get when you realized you’ve screwed over any chance of getting back your deposit by making your house a well lived-in home.

Read more stuff I wrote during college

In which my dad takes a stance against man-children who cut lines.

It was Friday afternoon and I had just gotten done with my afternoon job organizing the supply closet in the JROTC building. I was sitting on the couch reading the weekend entertainment section of the local newspaper when I noticed a small blurb announcing a comic book convention.

I’ve been a fan of comic books since the days of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures. My first real experience with superhero comics, though, came when my father brought home an issue of Uncanny X-Men that he had bought for me at the airport during a business trip he took to Dallas.

Since that issue, I’ve had a strong interest in “funny books.” Going to a convention dedicated to comic books only naturally seemed like my kind of fun.

According to the news brief, the convention would have a dealer’s room with two comic book artists available for autographs and sketches. I looked at the artists’ names and didn’t recognizing either of them. This did not deter my excitement though. Even if the artists were not famous (to me), they might be someday (or even better — they may someday die a tragic death that would cause everything they touched in life to go up in value).

I decided I would get the artists’ signatures and would hoard them away — waiting for the day that their value would increase enough for me to cash in on a sizable profit.

Because my parents had not forked over the money for me to attend driving school yet, I needed a ride. I went to ask my mother, a supporter of the arts even if she didn’t necessarily appreciate some of the dorkier varieties it came in. I figured I could convince her to drop me off at the convention while she ran some errands.

When I told her about the event, though, the first thing out of her mouth was not the “sure” I expected. Instead, she gave me a half-distracted afterthought of a response: “Your father can take you.”

My father could very well not take me.

My dad, although a wonderful guy, is not the most understanding of “alternative lifestyles.” When we dropped off my oldest sister at school in Austin, my dad nearly had an aneurysm watching the freaks and geeks of The Drag prowl their beloved territory.

It wasn’t just junkies and hobos my dad had a problem with, though. I had long learned not to ask him to give me a ride to the comic book store as he couldn’t grasp the affection grown men could have for video games or collectable action figures. I was positive he would not be keen on taking me to a convention that celebrated the idea of adults playing with their toys. This could only end badly.

Nevertheless, Sunday found my father and I begrudgingly driving to the hotel that would house the convention. Neither one of us thought this particular father-son bounding time was a good idea but my mother insisted we attend together. My father and I remained silent during the trip, the two of us concentrating on the radio.

When we arrived at the hotel, we exited the car and walked towards the conference room.

A smug look appeared on my father’s face when he saw a couple of small children excitedly talking about Batman. While at first it seemed that my father’s claims that comic books were for kids seemed to have been validated, his smug expression soon turned to a frozen look of horror as we entered the conference room to find a smattering of 30-year old men, their common bond seeming to be obesity and pony tails. These living, breathing “Comic Book Guy” impersonators were gathered around old toys and boxes upon boxes of comic books. The din of hushed conversation about whether Black Cat or Catwoman was hotter was only overpowered by the attendees’ collective labored breathing.

The few children that were present clung to the hands of their fathers, men who eyed mint condition Boba Fett toys with the kind of hunter’s gleam that is usually reserved for barflies trying to pick up women.

A lone woman browsed through a dealer’s selection, her every move studied by love struck geeks too nervous to even breathe near her.

After scanning the room quickly, I made my way to the first artist’s booth.

I was low on cash and was not interested in the dealer’s floor. My primary objective was to collect the two artists’ John Hancocks and leave with a minimum of monetary damage.

I picked up a book from each artist and stood in line for my first autograph.

Mike Grell, illustrator/writer, was a grizzled old man hobbled over his sketch pad, fervently drawing a buxom image of some warrior woman for a sweaty man dressed in a too-tight Star Wars shirt. The line of those waiting for an autograph seemed to crawl as Grell switched between drawing sketches and signing books. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched my father move from booth to booth, staring in pity at the men who had devoted their life towards recapturing their childhood.

When I finally got within reach of Mr. Grell, he was working on a sketch. I stood patiently, watching the pro masterfully work his pen and pencil.

As I waited, a large figure filled the space to the right of me. I turned to look at who had just cut in front of me and saw the largest Mexican I had ever encountered.

Covered in bristle-like hair, the man-child resembled a cross between Danny Trejo and Louie Anderson. He asked Grell in a voice that rang out like Giant Man himself, “Are you signing comic books?”

Grell looked up at the individual and, after allowing himself a double take, nodded a quick yes and reached for the man’s book.

Faster then the Flash, my father appeared at my side. He whispered into my ear in a harsh tone, “You can’t let people cut in front of you! Speak up for yourself.”

I gave my dad a quick nod in agreement but that was not enough for my old man.

“You need to stand up for yourself,” he warned. “Otherwise, people are going to walk right over you for the rest of your life.”

Mr. Grell took only a few extra seconds to sign the Man-Child’s book before he turned to sign mine but those few stolen seconds seemed, to my dad, to be a personal attack on everything our family stood for. As I walked away from my fuming father, I stood in line for the second artist.

I cannot remember the other artist’s name for the life of me, but I do recall that he was Brazilian and he worked with a speed and rhythm that seemed uncanny.

It appeared to me that the artist could sketch with one hand while signing with the other. As I waited, the line in front of me quickly melted away.

The whole time, though, I was distracted from watching the artist work by the shadow of my father’s anxious figure as he supervised the proceedings. He had tired of the dealers’ floor and had taken active interest in my quest to gain autographs.

As the artist finished a quick sketch of the Flash, the same Mexican Man-Child appeared out of nowhere to stand at my right again. This time, it appeared he was hypnotized by the artist’s speed.

He clutched his comic book to his chest as his eyes followed the artist’s rapidly-moving hands.

The artist finished his sketch and looked up to call upon his next task when he saw the Man-Child. Standing next to this 6-foot-five, 300-plus pound mountain of a man, I naturally disappeared into the background.

My hair could have been on fire and the artist would have only noticed the comic book desperately clutched in the Man-Child’s sweaty hands. The Brazilian asked if the Man-Child would like the book signed. He mouthed a hushed yes before handing the artist the crumpled book.

My dad witnessed the Man-Child’s repeat offense and the dam broke. Exploding into a gnashing of sound and fury, my father roared, “What do you think you’re doing?”

Not comprehending what was occurring, the Man-Child only managed to mouth the word “Wha-?” before my father was in his face.

“You’re cutting in front of the boy again! That is the second time you’ve cut line. I don’t know how you people were raised to behave, but in a civilized society there’s such thing as waiting in lines.”

“I didn’t cut in line!” the Man-Child said, clearly confused by what was happening.

“Don’t give me that! We all saw you.”

By this time, the room had undergone a complete hush. Every eye was focused on the furious form of my father and the confused heap of fat and hair that stood next to me, already beginning to quiver with an untapped rage.

The artist tried to calm the rolling rock that had been unearthed but to no effect.

“I’m sorry… I didn’t see your son.”

“You stay out of this,” my father replied. “Get a real job!”

He quickly returned to his angered belittling of the Man-Child.

I quickly offered my book to the artist who signed it with a defeated aura.

We left shortly afterwards.

During the car trip home, my dad talked my ear off about how I needed to stand up for myself. It was my duty as an American to speak up against the injustices of life. He wasn’t going to always be there to look out for me, he warned.

I couldn’t have despised my dad more then I did during that trip home. I spent the ride steaming inwardly as I buried my nose in my comic book.

When I was young, it seemed as if my dad was always attacking innocent cashiers and waiters who got on the wrong end of his short fuse. Not satisfied with piss poor service, my dad would always demand perfection when it came to a job. He was not afraid to return hamburgers to the cooks or call out slow service with an almost gleeful fury. It was often an embarrassment to eat out with my dad. Going to the store was not any better. My father would often compare stories with my uncle about their exploits at terrorizing stock boys and cashiers.

Flash forward three years and I’m standing in line at the local on-campus café. The waiter has to be the stupidest girl ever to work food service. As she stares at me with a vacant expression in her eyes and her mouth hanging ajar I can’t help but verbally assault her, asking for quicker service and at least a quarter of her concentration. I have turned into my dad in more ways then one.

I have inherited his impatience, his sense of humor, even his snore.

Now, as I find myself living away from home and visiting him only on the rare occasion, I realize that my dad was not the bad guy that I made him out to be when I was younger. In his own way, he was merely trying to teach me valuable life lessons that I could take with me into my future. He was a real-life superhero, trying to impose upon me a sense of value and a code of living that I would use to define right and wrong — to learn about truth, justice and the American way.

My dad didn’t understand all of my hobbies, but that didn’t matter. He supported my interests even if it meant having to be face-to-face with a sad reminder of the loser comic book nerd I could potentially turn into — that is, without the ethics he was imparting upon me.

I have found that the love for my father and the memories I have with him (such as our first and only comic book convention) more then make up for any slight embarrassment I felt as a kid.

My dad won’t be around forever, but the memory of him telling the poor Brazilian comic book artist to get a real job will be. And in the end, that’s what’s really important.

Read more stories of my childhood.

During the last months of college, I spent a lot of time reassessing my life.

What was it I wanted to do? Where did I want to do it? Who did I want to do it with? I took a lot of time to figure out who, after 22 years on Earth, I really was. It was all part of an effort to meet the “real world” with as little wind-resistance as possible.

Besides a journey through the land of introspection, this also included undertaking a massive streamlining effort in my surroundings — finally stripping myself of a lot of the baggage I’d spent a better part of my life carrying around.

Besides the requisite emotional baggage, I also needed to finally get rid of some of the material junk I’d been hoarding since childhood. This meant several trips to the local Goodwill to donate old clothes, selling off my comic book collection on eBay and sorting through boxes of class notes I’d saved for some reason now unfathomable to me.

It was during this purging of my personal life that I came across two heavy plastic storage containers that had sat in the back of my closet since I moved out of my parent’s house. These boxes contained a wide assortment of knick-knacks, pattywacks and other assorted junk that I had saved since I was young. While shifting through the boxes, I found rocks that had captured my attention when I was five years old, deformed action figures that had helped me learn about the destructive power of fire and a childhood’s worth of trapper keepers. I tossed what I thought I no longer needed and repacked those bits of childhood paraphernalia I felt I couldn’t possibly part with. The things I saved included my POG collection, early attempts at artwork and my Eagle Scout project workbook. Everything else went into the two trash bags I quickly filled with teenage waste.

Things I threw out included a miniature llama, a collection of Star Wars trading cards, the many certificates I had accumulated during my time with Nikki Rowe High School’s award-happy JROTC program and almost a dozen trapper keepers.

Buried in one trapper keeper, though, I discovered a vast collection of e-mail exchanges and handwritten notes I had saved from my time navigating the halls of middle school and high school. Presented with these correspondences for the first time in four years, I spent a few hours reading over them. The more I read, I partly grew wistful for the seemingly simpler times of grade school. Mostly, though, I grew more and more embarrassed at my angst-ridden high school writing style.

Reading the notes and e-mails really took me on a trip down memory lane – something this whole exercise was designed to prevent. I was supposed to be preparing myself for the future by cleansing myself of the past. Instead, here I was pouring over my childhood as if I was preparing an A&E Biography about myself.

For all too long, I have had a problem with dwelling too much in the past. I spend too many hours thinking about my regrets and dreaming about the roads not taken. Reading my library of letters brought back all of those feelings and I felt myself drowning in nostalgia.

I was so overwhelmed by regret — feelings I knew would only be counterproductive — I gathered up my notes, letters and, in essence, memories, put my past in a barbeque pit and dowsed it with lighting fluid. It turns out, though, I’m not too good at the whole lighting things on fire bit — even though my deformed action figures might disagree. It took me almost ten minutes, a quart of lighter fluid and a book of matches to get the notes burning. But once they did, boy it was wonderful.

As the flames engulfed the love letters, diary entries and mix tapes, it felt like the chains that bound me to the past were also melting off. Like handcuffs that were left on for too long, though, these chains did leave some scares.

A few scars are good, though, because as the Beatles sang, “There are places I remember all my life, though some have changed. Some forever, not for better. Some have gone and some remain. All these places had their moments. With lovers and friends I still can recall. Some are dead and some are living. In my life I’ve loved them all.”

Although it might seem like it, by burning those notes I didn’t turn my back on my friends and I didn’t symbolically down the bridges that built our friendship. No, by burning those physical manifestations of the past I felt like I was finally free to see the future’s light in a whole new way. Instead of destroying the memories I had with my high school friends, I destroyed the roadblocks that prevented me from making new memories and new friends.

As the notes burnt and the wind began to pick up the ashes and blow them into my face, I wiped off the smudges that had once been representations of love, loss and hope.

Maybe the physical notes are gone forever, or maybe, through the ashes covering my face and hair, I absorbed some of their molecules into my own body — taking the memories with me into the rest of my life; learning from the past and looking toward the future.

Read more stories about my college experience.

Time travel is a one-way ticket to misery.

Without a doubt, it would be awesome to be able to visit the past  — not to witness historic events (that’s what movies are for) but to alter my own history.

Personally, I’d not only give my left nut, I’d give society’s collective left nut for the chance to hop in a DeLorean and jet off to my childhood — lending some of that hindsight 20/20 vision to Lil’ Robert and ensuring that all the mistakes that haunt my past would never be made.

On the other hand, science fiction authors and hack screenwriters have shown us time and time again that messing with time travel never ends well.

Judging from what fiction has taught us (and we should always listen to what fiction teaches us), God is on a constant crusade to punish time travelers with bad karma.

If the day comes where I somehow invent time travel — well … let’s face it, I’m never going to invent time travel. I’m neither scientifically inclined nor highly motivated.

If the day comes where I stumble upon the chance to steal some scientist’s time machine and I hop back to the seventh grade and manage to impart all my life lessons and words of warning to the younger version of me — helping him to gain the self-confidence I lacked at that age and win that date with the girl of our dreams (pesky run-on sentence … hold on, I need to catch my breath … okay, all better) — If I did all that, God would probably hit him/me with a train during his/my date — a date that I never experienced or ever will because when past-me dies, present-me ceases to be as well. So sayth the book of Frequency.

Thus, God doesn’t like time travelers.

It’s not like I would go back in time to hurt anybody. I don’t want to exact revenge on my playground foes (not yet, at least) and I don’t have any real desire to cheat at the stock market (authorities would get too suspicious if seventh grade-me started to make a killing on Wall Street and everybody knows the real way to make money off time travel is to bet on sports like in Back to the Future Part II).

No, I just want to make a better life for myself. Isn’t that the American dream?

Technology is constantly catching up with the American Dream. 200 years ago, immigrants would travel in boats to America, the so-called “New World,” for a fresh beginning.

Today, Americans fly in planes to Canada for a fresh beginning and free healthcare.

Tomorrow, I’ll use a time machine to be an immigrant of the future.

I want to travel to the “Old World” for a fresh middle.

I would tell Lil’ Robert not to let his Mom bye his clothing – because Looney Toons characters most assuredly do not belong on the shirts of middle school boys.

I would tell him that he should ask out the girl he’s been crushing on because a year later, she’ll be forever out of his reach.

I’d tell him to stop wearing such tight jeans because very soon he’s going to experience a very embarrassing moment that involves his pants ripping.

On a similar note, I’d tell him that he should always wear clean underwear.

I’d tell him that soda pop is fun and tasty, but if you drink too much of it, you are going to have to pause and catch your breath during run-on sentences in the future.

I’d warn him against getting into a fight with his best friend over something trivial because he won’t want to spend the next four years not hanging out with him.

I’d tell him not to waste so much money on trading cards and action figures because in five years time, he’ll be tired of them and will throw them away.

I’d tell him that despite what he thinks, the way to win girls’ hearts isn’t through quoting “Weird Al” Yankovic lyrics or showing her how he can fit a whole apple into his mouth.

I’d tell him not to listen too much to what that jerk who sits behind him in math class says. In six years, he’ll be rotting in jail. I’d also warn him against being such a jerk himself. Nobody wants to be remembered as the class bully.

I’d tell him to check our priorities. Be nicer to the classmates who will remain friends with you for the rest of your life and don’t bother trying to win the approval of the jerks who are just using you for the then and there.

I know that I can never go back in time and do all these things.

God would kill me like he killed Bruce Willis in 12 Monkeys.

Instead, I’ll have to settle for the next best thing to time travel: becoming a father and living vicariously through the lives of my future kids.

Read more of my thoughts on life