​This is a love letter. 

I mean, I guess this is a love letter. But it's not the sort of love letter one typically thinks of when one thinks of "love letters." It might not be Webster's definition of love letter. Even our personal definitions of love and letter may differ.

Wait. Hold on. Before you start deliberating whether to use my heart as a trampoline, hear me out.

With global disaster looming, large-scale crises and tragedies happening on a daily basis and the impending end of the world, it seems prudent to reach out to loved ones in some meaningful way sooner rather than later. It shouldn't take an apocalypse to prompt personal correspondence, just as it shouldn't take a capitalistic holiday to motivate people to send gifts or treat others with kindness. In our hectic everyday lives, with our jobs and side hustles and sundry family activities, we've forced to pick our leisurely pursuits based on how easily they fit into the quiet pockets of the days. It's far less demanding to binge a podcast in a blanket fort than it is to meet up for brunch with friends across town. It's rare that anyone sends more than a quick email to check in with anyone without following up with the need of a favour. On the train to work today, I could've caught up on the backlog of electronic correspondence since 1998, read any of the Facebook messages accumulated in the last five years, and responded to a friend's "sup" text from two weeks ago. Instead, I stared out the window and then skimmed four tweet threads dedicated to theories about '90s sitcom spin-offs. 

Anyway, here I am, taking time out of my very hectic life at the end of the world to write a declaration of my love for you. A declaration that seems unnecessary. I suspect you know that I love you. At the very least, you must suspect something, based on the frequency of our social media interactions alone. I feel that I could have lived the rest of my life without blatantly expressing what must be obvious fact and to which you may reply, "Well, duh."

In an ideal world, I could just scribble “I love you” on a scrap of paper and pass it to you and that would be enough. If free love still existed, you’d need only respond with “Right on, man” and we'd go about our lives. But ours is not an ideal world. When the idea that love could be distributed cost-free and double as its own reward couldn't be successfully monetized, the liberation of love was short-lived. We've instead been conditioned to feel anxiety whenever this four-letter word is introduced between two people, to believe that saying "I love you" to someone outside of your bloodline means the relationship must advance or change course in some way.

Now that I have invoked that three-word phrase, what social contract have I unwittingly entered us into? What does it mean and what do we do about it? The declaration of love is often accompanied by the expectation of reciprocation, or a detailed explanation of why the declared love cannot be reciprocated. Please rest assured, there is no need for that here. I don’t feel that my love is unrequited. It need not be requited. I am quite content with my... quited love for you. I confess there will be a twinge of embarrassment should you say that you consider me nothing more than the most distant of acquaintances. Even then, I should not regret my revelation. I love you and you are a person deserving of love, in whatever form it takes.

Whatever form does it take? My heart pounds, my stomach flutters, my pulse quickens as I search for the words that convey my feelings accurately. How can I quantify my love in a way that isn't intimidating or off-putting? What kind of love do I feel? Romantic? Platonic? Some as yet uncategorized -ic? I just did a Google search to look for a Buzzfeed quiz that could help me define it. Did you know there are seven types of love, apparently? I'm not sure any one type defines my love for you. It's probably on the cusp of several types or perhaps in the centre of a complex Venn diagram. Perhaps I could define my love for you with a colour from the overlap within the diagram. I think it's somewhere in the purple family. Violet seems too common. Lavender and Lilac seem too lightweight. It's a deeper, richer hue, I think, with an exotic sounding name, like Mauveine or Purpureus or Byzantium.

My Aubergine love is one that does not demand impossible tasks or commit them. I have not constructed a bespoke pedestal for you to perch atop so that I might do whatever one does for people on pedestals. It is far beyond my power to feng shui the universe in order to demonstrate my love or to encourage you to reciprocate. I don't think my love for you is strong enough to move earthly or heavenly bodies to woo and win you. In fact, I'm disinclined to pitch woo of any sort. Any fantastic notions of riding off into the sunset together on a motorcycle or yacht as Michael McDonald sings over our end credits must be quashed. I've no plans to rent one of these romantic escapade vehicles with grand intentions to sweep you away. Love stories rarely start with the yacht whisking our romantic leads away to embark on their new lives together. We always catch them at the end of a troubled tale and presume they've got two tickets to Paradise just across the bay from Happily Ever After. If the two of us set sail on the sea of love, we'd have so much real life, un-cinematic baggage to sort out and all the upending and rearranging of lives that is messy and unpleasant and full of risks.

So, I don't love you enough to embarrass myself with expensive gestures or to complicate our otherwise comfortable, separate lives. I could knit you a hat or perhaps some socks. Do you need wooly socks that feel like someone is always hugging your feet? 

It is true that many people toss love around carelessly, casually upselling their feelings for celebrities and superhero movies and pumpkin spice lattes and sun-dried tomatoes. Could I be guilty of this semantic bleaching, using "love" as a tidy shorthand for what is likely more accurate, but decidedly awkward and cringeworthy? Have I said "I love you" when what I really mean is--

I have a fondness for you. 
I feel warmth towards you. 
I have great admiration and affection for you. 
I hold you in high esteem. 
I cherish our bond. 
I enjoy your company. 
I relish our interactions. 

Yuck, right? None of these are things you’d like to see scribbled on a bar napkin, much less printed as spoken by an anthropomorphic pimento-loaf cupid on some vintage novelty Valentine’s Day card. 

I didn't say this is a good love letter.

But, I do love you.

I'm sorry. It is crass to unpack my feelings for you to you. Perhaps it would've been better had I just tweeted you a couple of heart emojis and a nonthreatening Homestar Runner GIF.

I could not tell you why, or when, or what you did to provoke such strong emotions in your favour? I can't tell you how to replicate that process for someone whose love you seek? It probably wasn't one isolatable incidence, but countless insignificant moments—a dozen little acts of kindnesses, glances, gestures, and jokes inflated to absurd significance.

In idle moments, I might analyze our shared moments, looking for signs that you love me back—an intentional grazing of hands, eye contact we might've held for a beat longer than usual, a reluctance to part company, or a meaningful string of internet-based graphics. As if our friendship were a Magic Eye picture, I stare at it, into it, through it until I see the sailboat of our mutual admiration. 

I wonder what kind of love, if any, you might have for me? How many types of love? Do our loves exist on separate planes, never to intersect? Or would our Venn diagrams mesh perfectly? I shouldn't speculate. You are entitled to whatever is in your heart, even if that is the platonic goodwill we should carry for all creatures throughout the universe.

Oh, but, what if, in professing my feeling for you while trying to free you from the obligation to reciprocate or respond, I have unwittingly broken your heart? Was it foolish of me to not consider that you might possess a greater love for me? And, by attempting to minimize the intensity of my feelings, made you feel it necessary to minimize your own feelings? 

Damn Love. 

Damn the poets and damn the advertisers and damn the movies and music and literature and chocolate boxes and damn the Church and the State and the human body and all its involuntary reactions to stimuli and damn the atom for making love so damned difficult to convey. 

All I really wanted to do was to express my positive feelings for you, here at what could be the end of the world as we know it. I just wanted you to know that, even at one of the darkest points in human history or your own personal history, someone is rooting for you to be safe and comfortable, that someone has been affected for the better by your existence, that someone out here does love you.

Love.

Hiya, friend. You say you lost your job today and all your side hustles went bust and your phone battery is at 23% and it's only 9:45 in the morning because your charger cord is on the fritz and it's the third replacement you've bought this month and your avocado is half rotten and the pit is lodged pretty deep into the half that's still green and your gluten-free toast is burnt and someone in your building keeps taking your Amazon packages so you've placed the same order for shampoo and double-A batteries five times while your dandruff flakes all over your pillow and your smoke alarm goes off every 25 seconds because the batteries ran out three weeks ago and you can't reach the ceiling to stop the alarm because your boyfriend stole your stepladder when he left last month to move in with a girl he met through a Google document.
Is that what's troublin' you, bub?

Raise your blanket over your head and take a nap for awhile
You deserve rest and self-care is important
Keep calm and try again tomorrow!

How ya doin', fella? You say there was another mass murder committed by a white man and you tried calling your senator about it but he was out hunting with an international oil tycoon and you went to the doctor for a cough and he wrote you a prescription but when you got to the pharmacy, they only had brand name capsules and your drug plan just covers generic and your rent keeps rising and so do the oceans and all your mutual acquaintances muted you on Twitter and you tuned into a free live streaming of a rare concert by your favourite band but the feed buffered for an hour an a half so you missed the show while everyone on social media said it was the best-ever performance by the group and the recording can only be borrowed for $5.99 on a service that isn't available in your country and you backed a project on Kickstarter that promised to ship out perks to donors but it's been six months and you haven't received the perks and the company doesn't share progress updates anymore and you tried emailing but the letters keep bouncing back and you just cracked the screen on your smartphone the day after the warranty expired.
Is that what's on your mind, sport?

Pull your socks up high and join a protest march
You'll see that everyone's pissed off
And they'll never give up either!

Hey, pal. You say your car ran outta gas and the digital dashboard has been on the fritz so you didn't know your tank was empty and the car stopped in the middle of nowhere during a big rainstorm and you can't get any reception on your phone but that's okay because you forgot to pay your bill when your reminder app stopped reminding you after a big update and the phone service was shut off and the nearest pay phone is three miles back but you don't even know if pay phones still work and the gas station is just a mile away but you're boycotting the brand because of their unethical treatment of indigenous women and baby seals and your girlfriend's crying because her latest selfie only got 12 likes and you start to walk toward the gas station when an 18-wheeler comes whizzing by through a large puddle and you get soaked and a raccoon comes by and steals the gas can right out of your hand and the radio announces that the president just launched nuclear weapons and you're not sure if you have enough La Croix at home to get through the apocalypse.
Is that what's got you glum, chum?

Lift your chin up and take a look at the sky
​And you'll say... yeah, shit's fucked.

​I am now sitting in a small beige room. The room's only contents are me and this gray chair. In front of me is the only door to the room and a numeric keypad mounted on the wall beside it. There are no windows and no vents. The fluorescent overhead lighting fixture is mounted to a solid white ceiling. The flooring looks some kind of institutional linoleum. There are no mirrors or clocks or artwork, no magazines, pamphlets, instructions, or signs. 

I don't know how I got here. 

The last thing I remember is lying in a hospital bed, with the faint din and chatter of hospital staff and passers-by in the background and the louder blips and whirs of machines seemingly attached to my person.

I am not in a hospital gown now, just my regular clothes. I think these are my regular clothes. I've worn this sweater before but these shoes look different. Did I buy these shoes? They seem like shoes I would buy. I like them, anyway. This is the watch my mother gave me three birthdays ago. Is this the time? Hmm. The hands aren't moving. Either this watch has died or I have!

What is this room? Is this a waiting room? Am I waiting to be discharged from the hospital? Those must've been some really good drugs for me to not remember getting up and dressed and coming into this room. How long have I been here? It feels like I have been waiting a while and no one has come in here to get me. Without a clock, I don't know if I've sitting here ten minutes or ten days. It can't be ten days because I've not gotten hungry or sleepy or the need for a toilet yet. When was the last time I ate something? I don't recall.

It feels very small for a waiting room, more like an elevator or a fully enclosed cubicle. Maybe it's an isolation booth. Why do I need to be isolated from everything except this chair?

Maybe I should just try the door. Why didn't I do that in the first place? Politeness, I guess? I don't want to push my way through if they sat me in here for a particular reason and I was still too drugged up to understand. I didn't understand most of why I was in the hospital anyway. However, this wait seems excessive, even by excessive medical wait time standards. Boy, I wish I could remember something. What if I was abducted from the hospital and brought here and certain danger lurks beyond that door? What lurks here but certain boredom?

I go to the door. It's locked. Is it locked or stuck? Locked. What if I turn the knob the other—nope. Maybe I'm too weak to open the door. I'll knock. 

I'll knock louder. 

What are the odds that I can guess the code for this keypad? Is it a three-digit code? Five? Four? I punch in all the obvious numerical password variations. Nope. I punch in every PIN code I've ever had. The handle doesn't budge.

Maybe this is one of those psych evaluation tests to see how long a person is willing to wait in a room or to what lengths someone will go to escape the room. I don't see any potential escape routes. If the ceiling were panelled, I could try to hoist myself up and see if that led anywhere. Or if there were air ducts, I could wriggle through those tunnels to...wherever air ducts go. Whoever designed this room certainly outsmarted me.

I try my birthdate on the keypad. The door unlocks. Finally. 

On the other side of the door is a hospital room, different from the one I was in before. It smells of cigarettes and ammonia. My mother is asleep in the bed, with a newborn in a hospital crib next to her. She looks so young, so peaceful—my mother, that is. Babies naturally look young, except when they look like wrinkly old men. I move to take a closer look at this tiny, wrinkly old newborn—is this me? I examine the name band around the baby's ankle. She has my name. She looks like my baby pictures. 

What... 

And how? 

I stand here for—oh, look, a clock—twenty minutes attempting to process this experience. Maybe the drugs haven't worn off yet. 

I don't want to disturb my mother, on any of the levels on which this would be disturbing. Maybe someone beyond her door has answers for me. I open the door to leave her room, to explore the rest of the hospital, but when I walk through the doorway, I am returned to my isolation booth. 

Do I try to go back? Can I try punching in a different date? Do I know any other dates? My mother's birthday! Doesn't work. Dad's birthday! Nope. Lincoln's assassination! No...but I don't even know that I know when that was. Try some far off date in the future. No go. How about...my sixth birthday? Bingo!

I leave the beige room and enter my family's mauve and powder blue living room, where we're opening my birthday presents. No one acknowledges my entrance or notices as I walk around and sit on the piano bench next to Uncle Charles. I must be invisible. Time travel and invisibility? Why? Maybe this is a dream, one of those semi-conscious dreams where I can control some events but then the staircase turns into a dragon or something. Hey, this is the year I got my Dolly Pops and my Care Bear lunchbox! I wonder what my old bedroom would look like to me now. Still unobserved by the party revellers, I walk down the hallway to my childhood bedroom, turn the doorknob and...back to the tiny beige room.

So, I can travel through time, but only within my own timeline, where I am then invisible. If I try to pass through any door, it puts me back in this room. Isn't it time for some administrative sprite or anthropomorphic woodland creature to give me instructions or hints or a ridiculous riddle to solve to guide me to my purpose for being here?

I should try to find out how I got here. I punch in the day I went into the hospital. No good. Drat. I try every day before that to no avail until, at last, a day three months earlier. The door unlocks but I don't leave. What am I trying to do? If I'm not able return to the last day that I think I can recall, am I likely to find answers from any other time? If I am invisible, how do I try to catch my own attention, to warn myself about...whatever this is? "Oh, hey, Self. I'm us from the Future and something happens where I can come and speak to you—what? Are we dead? Is this a joke? Is it a dream? I don't know either! Anyway, stay vigilant and take extra care around March 2015." 

Even if I could proffer a warning, could I do anything to change the course of events that led me here? What needs to be changed and how do I do that? Or, do I wind up here anyway? Is the thing that put me here a fixed point in my life, a kind of heat-seeking missile that will track me down and impact me, regardless of my lifestyle, dietary, or religious augmentations? The rules of time travel have never made sense to me.

Seriously, a guidebook or knowledgable elf would be very helpful right now. Where is that quirky guardian spirit whose ethereal career advancement depends on my escaping this magical isolation time travel booth? 

If no one will answer my questions, I have to seek out the answers myself. Can I communicate with anyone? Can I touch things? Can I bring back mementos and liven up my little room here? Figuring that I have infinite time, and with no clues to the consequences of my actions, I start a series of experiments. 

I go to my early childhood, back to my first bedroom. While my younger self sleeps, I search for clues and test the scope of my abilities with little impact on my timeline. I learn how to move things. While my toddler self plays with our stuffed animals, I confirm that I have no physical presence. No one can hear me speak. Or scream. I go to my friend Lindsay’s thirteenth birthday party, where we played with her Ouija board in an effort to ask ghosts whether certain boys liked us. No matter how much ghostly ruckus I make, I cannot rouse myself or the other teenage girls. Lindsay stubbornly rejects my Ouija message that Kevin likes Kendra. If I can't prevent her heartbreak when Kevin takes Kendra to the Homecoming Dance three weeks later, what are the odds that I can keep myself from becoming an invisible time-traveling spirit?

I return to my old bedroom to practice moving furniture when I notice my father's copy of his Morse Code handbook on my nightstand. When I was 10 or 11, he tried teaching me the Morse alphabet and key phrases so that we could communicate with each other or I could signal for help. I wish he were here with me now. Does he have his own little beige room? 

I try to shadow myself for long intervals. Sometimes we go for days at a time and I can travel with myself across the house, across town, across state lines. Eventually we walk through a door and I wind up back in my tiny empty room. 

Maybe these are my memories. Maybe I'm not really travelling through time but just through my own memories. But what am I supposed to do? Do I revisit my own highlights? Do I relive the bad moments to discover what I thought were the worst experiences weren't so bad after all? I've been so preoccupied with looking for answers, I haven't really paid attention to the actual events I was popping into. What if I'm meant only to observe, not interfere with events? Maybe I'm supposed to have a grand epiphany that will upgrade my dreary accommodations.  

If these are my memories, maybe I'm not travelling at all. Maybe I'm in a coma and I lost those last three months of memories to trauma. What else have I lost? How long have I been here? Is it really so bad here? I am not in pain, I'm not cold or hungry or constipated or sleepy, I'm not even lonely. Do I really want to find a way back to paying bills and long lines at the grocery store and heartbreak and backaches and adult acne? Don't I want to go back to chocolate chip cookies and bacon and hot showers and cold beer and the smell of fresh laundry and stale farts and laughter and feeling? 

This is a pointless game. What if there is no back?

My kingdom for a sensible cricket in spats and a top hat to sing a song right about now.

I go to the door and punch in my father's dying day. I know that I'll be sitting with him in hospice, holding his hand and telling him the banalities of that day's errands. I'm not sure why I chose this day, except one more desperate attempt to answer my questions before I resign myself to my little gray chair in my little beige room to sit, possibly forever. I watch my Earthly self tap Morse Code into our father's hand. I recognize it as a secret phrase he taught me. He tries to return the sentiment, but his hands are weak and slow. 

Eventually my father drifts into a deeper sleep and my Earthly self nods off. This is the time to take a risk. I grab a spoon from his dinner tray and tap our secret phrase onto the wall. I hear it repeated over on the bedside table. It doesn't seem to come from anyone visibly present in the room. I try it again. It repeats. This is the most excitement I've experienced in, well, who knows. 

I tap frantically on the wall.

Dad? Yes!
I have so many questions! Is this real? Where are you? I can't see you either! 

I want to hug him! I want to speak! I tap and tell him all about my room and the time travel and the...what does this mean...if we're both here?

He taps back about his own room, which is the same as mine. He says he started by visiting all of his happiest memories—me, my mother, our holidays, Sunday dinners with his parents—and then looked for ways to move on. He tells me that he still hasn't figured anything out and that this is the first time he's had communication with anyone. He says he's been losing memories. This is only day he can access now. 

We chat as best we can, for as long as we can. I tell him everything that's happened to me in the five years, minus three months, since he died. Soon, his body flatlines and the nurses flood in and in all the commotion, we lose each other again. 

I return to my room. My cubicle. My isolation chamber. 

I think about my happiest memories and which ones I'll revisit. The happiest moments never seem to be the big events, like graduations and weddings and birthdays. It's going for ice cream and stopping to watch a neighbourhood baseball game. It's a weekend nap with the cats snuggled up beside me. It's going for a walk at sunset on a cool July evening and your favourite song comes on the radio. But these are not moments you can type into a keypad and visit whenever you want. I don't remember the date. 

In a fit of nostalgia, a craving for the hard rock of my youth to ease my current frustrations, I punch in a random day from my moody teenage days. The door doesn't budge. I try it again. I try the day before, the day after. Have the rules changed? I punch in my college graduation. No good. Have I already forgotten the date I graduated? I try my 21st birthday. The door still won't open. Am I already losing my memories? It doesn't feel like I've been here long enough.

I sit and I wait. It's really not so bad in here. 

Suddenly, a buzzer. The door opens and a bright light floods in. 

A couple discusses a development that could impact their relationship.

Girlfriend - early 30s, wearing bulky cardigan with pockets and big glasses on chain around neck, wardrobe and mannerisms that would befit an elderly man
Boyfriend - early 30s, youthful casual dress, contrast from girlfriend's attire

Boyfriend enters and joins his Girlfriend at cafe table.

Boyfriend
Sorry I'm late, I just got your text. What's wrong?

Girlfriend
Oh, nothing's wrong.

Boyfriend
But you have something important to tell me?

Girlfriend
Yes. 
(pauses, unsure how to break the news, then announces excitedly) 
I'm a Grandpa!

Boyfriend
Hey!—Bu...what?

Girlfriend
I'm a Grandpa.

Boyfriend
I don't know what that means. Do you have some family that I don't know about?

Girlfriend
(scoffs) 
No.

Boyfriend
Well, uh, did you adopt someone who has kids?

Girlfriend
Of course not.

Boyfriend
I guess I don't understand.

Girlfriend
As you know, I recently had a big birthday and that got me asking myself a lot of questions. Who am I? What am I doing with my life? What do I see for my future? I have done a lot of soul searching, trying to determine my place in the world, in society, and I've finally found it.

Boyfriend
(still trying to process the concept)
Wait...a grandfather?

Girlfriend
Grandpa.

Boyfriend
So...you want to be a grandfather? How's that gonna work? How will that affect us? Are you transitioning? Oh god! I don't know what to say without sounding insensitive. What can I say? Am I allowed to ask questions? Now I have so many questions!

Girlfriend
Calm down. Obviously I'm not a literal grandfather. I'm simply self-identifying as a Grandpa because that's the lifestyle that most comfortably defines me. 

Boyfriend
Why not be a grandmother? You could take up knitting? Or baking!

Girlfriend
Ugh, knitting. I need a new hobby at my age? Grandmothers are expected to be warm and compassionate and cuddly. Grandpas have no responsibilities. They don't have to tolerate children. They don't have to tolerate anything! They can be racist and make insensitive, off-colour remarks and people think it's adorable. They can dress comfortably. They can tell terrible jokes—I love terrible jokes!  As a grandpa, I can play chess in the park in the middle of the afternoon. I can watch the old dubya-dubya two pictures on television.

Boyfriend
Well, you are kind of racist and you do love movies about Nazis.

Girlfriend
I don't love the Nazis. I love pictures about beating the Nazis.

Boyfriend
Still, a lady grandfather? That’s not how nature works. Don’t you think it’s a bit…privileged of you to self-identify in a masculine way. If you weren’t a white woman, you wouldn’t be able to pull this off.

Girlfriend
How dare you! I'm blazing a trail for people of all kinds to be able to live openly as Grandpas.

Boyfriend
This is too weird.

Girlfriend
If you can't handle this, I got a full bag of Werther's Originals and the boxset of Matlock at home, so...
(starts to leave)

Boyfriend
No, it's not you. Well, it's you a little bit. It's just...this is not the first time a woman has had a personal identity awakening with me.

Girlfriend
Oh yeah?

Boyfriend
Something about dating me triggers an epiphany about a woman's sense of self, I guess? My first girlfriend turned into a Mermaid. My girlfriend at university determined she was a Juggalo. One woman realized she was a Brony. Another became a nudist...that wasn't so bad except she was sushi chef. One girlfriend left me for one of her characters in The Sims game and married him last year...they just adopted Tamagotchi triplets. And my last girlfriend self-identified as a sloth—the animal not the sin.

Girlfriend
They all sound adorable. 

Boyfriend
What happened to normal women?!

Girlfriend
That's not a thing.

Boyfriend
(shrill)
Lady Grandpa isn't a thing! 

Girlfriend
Lemme tell you something—this culture is so obsessed with youth. Forty is the new twenty, sixty is the new middle-aged, and thirty-five is barely legal. "Adult" means something dirty and "Mature" means you're over the hill. No one wants to be old and yet our bodies continue to age. I'm watching the Generation X get gray and wrinkly and frail. My disaffected heroes are now afflicted with aches and pains, thinking about life insurance and walk-in tubs. The whole aging population gets lumped together under the zippy label "Zoomer" because no one can really retire and active 70-year-old bristle at being called elderly. Where do I fit in? I'm gonna grow old before I'm allowed to grow up. I've gotta go buy my pants at Forever 21  to play along with society's charade and maintaining a facade of youth. I didn't like being a teenager the first time, why should I fight to hold onto a part of life that I don't identify with simply because society romanticizes it? In my day, old people were allowed to be old. They weren't relevant anymore, but they could sit down and wear loose-fitting pants and soak their teeth in peace. By the time I am legitimately elderly, we'll be having going to rave parties in the all-purpose room in the nursing home and watching Brett and Blaine pop wheelies on their Rascals. Look how vibrant and active we all are! Age is just a number! Ignore the cracking of my crumbling bones—that just means I'm still alive! Why does the grocery store sound like a night club?! We didn't start the fire but maybe we should consider putting it out soon because the smoke is clouding sensible thinking. Youth may well be wasted on the young but comfort is wasted on the old.

Boyfriend
Yep. you're a Grandpa, alright.

Girlfriend
So? Where does that leave us?

Boyfriend
Well, nothing's really changed has it?

Girlfriend
Still me. Just a more comfortable me.

Boyfriend
I do want you to be comfortable. You know I've never really gone for the heavy eye make-up and the stilettos and the hair products. It all looks like an awful lot of work.

Girlfriend
This is what I'm saying.

Boyfriend
And nothing else would change? You're not gonna make me call you by some old-man name like Morty or Elmer?

Girlfriend
Someday you'll be an old man, Kyle. 

Boyfriend
Fair point.

Girlfriend
You wanna go back to my place and I'll read The Princess Bride to you again?

Boyfriend
Will there be kissing?

Girlfriend
It's not inconceivable.

Boyfriend
As you wish.

Girlfriend offers Boyfriend a hard candy. He takes it and unwraps it as the couple exits together.

My earliest memory is me at age three on a Saturday morning, alone in the living room, spinning around or whatever shenanigans a solo three-year-old can get into that would lead to breaking a lamp during the commercial break for Laverne & Shirley in the Army.

My second earliest memory is a short time later, watching our VHS recording of the CBS broadcast of The Muppet Movie, again alone in the living room, getting into whatever mischief that would lead to my lodging a pencil eraser in my left nostril during the Steve Martin scene. I waited until the end of the film before telling my mother because she specifically told me not to bother her with anything. And I figured I could still breathe out of the other nostril. I may have snuck into the kitchen to get pepper. Y’know, for sneezing. Because cartoons told me that was a thing. 

I remember watching Teresa Brewer perform “Music, Music, Music” on The Muppet Show while my mother put the last of my father’s belongings—his rattiest of underpants, his favourite kitchenware—in a box for him to pick up the next time he came to town. We were watching Charles in Charge when the moving truck took our furniture from the house we lived in to the small apartment where I would share a bedroom with my mother. 

A lot of my memories feature television as a supporting character. My memories are cluttered with theme songs and commercial jingles, catchphrases and clip shows. I could tell you all about how televised content influenced me, inspired me, and impacted my development as a human being. Well, duh. How could it not? Television was no mere household appliance—it was a member of our dysfunctional clan. It was almost always on. Get up in the morning and watch TV. Get home, have dinner while watching TV. Do homework while watching TV. Pull baby teeth while watching TV. Got the flu? Stay home and watch Phil Donahue. 

I was always sent to another room to watch TV, usually because my family was watching something on our other TV. Television was not a treat. It wasn’t a privilege to be snatched away. To deprive me of TV would’ve meant that my caretakers would have to deprive themselves—and actually watch me instead. Television was a staple in our media consumption diet, in a time before media consumption was a household concept. Our daily viewing surpassed the weekly average. If we weren’t a Nielsen family, we should’ve been. 

Television was my babysitter. Television was my teacher. Television was my best friend and constant companion. Television was my lifeline. Television taught me how to read, how to write, how to talk. It taught me how to live and love. It taught me about all the possible embarrassing scenarios one might encounter at dinner parties and big city offices. It taught me that if only I looked a certain way and used specific products, I could lead a glamorous, dramatic life. Television taught me how to be a detached observer of human behaviour.

You may imagine a small child sitting cross-legged on the floor, mouth agape, eyes wide staring up at a glowing set in a darkened room. This was not me. Ever the multi-tasker, I was colouring, building things, breaking lamps, turning my Little People hospital upside down and letting the Little People dolls carry on as if that was a completely normal orientation for a medical facility. Oftentimes, I would sit on my mother's bed with my back to the tv and enact stories with my stuffed animals. There was an ongoing love triangle between Kermit, Miss Piggy, and a large koala, with an was occasional disruption by slutty Rainbow Brite. 

Television was freedom. In the era before parental controls, I was granted full command of the dial—such responsibility to bestow on someone still in their single digits. As cable was still in its childhood as well, my choices were often limited to what could be picked up by VHF and rabbit ears. Ted Turner and the Public Broadcasting Service provided enough compelling content to limit my exposure to static noise around the rest of the dial. My mornings would start in darkness, watching pre-1950s Merrie Melodies/Looney Tunes and Time-Life commercials for nostalgic album compilations—amassing my knowledge of Classic Hollywood actors and five-second snippets of the biggest Swing and Doo Wop hits. If The Price Is Right was on, it was time for lunch. If the soap operas were on, it was time for me to light somewhere and hush so the grown-ups could watch their stories. Sharing a room with my mother meant my lullabies were the themes to The Love Boat and Murder, She Wrote. Other kids had Saturday morning cartoons while I had Monday Night Movie, Sunday afternoon wilderness shows, Must See TV Thursday, TGIF, Afterschool Special, daytime game shows, very special episodes and the Weather Channel.

It didn't have to be good, it just had to be on.

My mother never told me what I could watch. I never asked permission. We would occasionally discuss things I'd seen and she would gently tell me which things were not really appropriate for little girls. Our chats about The Patty Duke Show would meander as my mother reminisced about going to a neighbour's to watch television as not everyone could afford their own TV sets yet. TV programs were black and white because the world was black and white, she'd tell me. The broadcast day was significantly shorter, there were three stations and half of them were fuzzy, and she lost both her husbands because she didn't have Donna Reed's domestic flair or Annette Funicello's bosoms.

At my grandmother’s apartment, I would hunker down near her 13” black and white set to watch The Monkees and Gidget as she whiled away the hours shelling peas and drinking PBR and talking about the impending end times. She, along with the visiting biddies in her Bible study group, loved to scold me for sitting too close to the television because it would ruin my eyes. They also scolded me for holding books too close to my face when I was reading. It never occurred to any of these people that my eyes were already ruined and the effect was not their theoretical cause. 

For my ninth birthday, I was given a 4” portable TV/radio so that I could watch television anywhere, as long as I had eight C batteries and headphones. During school breaks, I would sit in my mother’s office and watch I Dream of Jeannie and Bewitched. During tornado watches (or if I was feeling a bit lonely), I would bring my little TV and my potholder loom into our living/dining room and do my crafts while watching Degrassi or Night Court or Amen while my mother sat a few feet away and watched some hourlong dramas on the big TV.

With my prolonged exposure to screens, how odd it was to go to someone else’s house and find that the television was not on. Children, if any were present, were sent outdoors. Women gathered and gabbed in the kitchen or maybe the fancy sitting room.  In social circles where Bible studies were more prevalent than viewing parties, television was considered to be man's domain. Only when menfolk were present did the TV come alive, usually to blare some sports program or a western or maybe a rerun of The A-Team. I was not permitted outdoors with the dirt and the bugs, so I had to endure bitchy kitchen gossip or, more frequently, John Wayne whooping it up with Dallas Cowboys or something. Thankfully, I had a book. Okay, it was a Charles in Charge novelization I'd borrowed from my sister. 

Time passed, life went on, networks stopped concluding their broadcast day with the national anthem and started filling the dead air with Time-Life infomercials. We all got slightly bigger television sets and expanded cable packages. Fifty-seven channels and nothing’s on but we’ll settle for the background noise because it’s better than facing reality. 

If I wanted to justify my family's dependence on television, I would reckon it was used as a deterrent, not only to discourage familial interaction but to dissuade outsiders from preying on an all-female household. Given our backwards state, is it really so far-fetched that someone could believe the blue glow of the television bouncing off our drawn curtains indicated a masculine presence? Maybe not if they could see we were watching Falcon Crest. 

Televisions are everywhere now—sports bars, Chinese restaurants, coffee shops, shopping mall food courts, and highway rest areas. We're all staring at screens for a significant portion of our day. We've got programs on demand and a 24-hour news cycle to prevent us from spending too much time with our own neuroses (while probably creating more). For all the choices at my fingertips, I still turn to public television and Turner-based networks.

What will we do if we're suddenly and indefinitely cut off from electricity and can no longer watch TV? Will we revert to the antiquated practice of gathering round the family piano to sing the old standards? Do we know any of the old standards? Do we even have any standards left? Will Time-Life sell us the sheet music? 

​A distinguished gentleman, dressed for dinner but with a smoking jacket instead of formal dinner jacket, wielding a pipe addresses a room full of “suspects” for a mysterious revelation.


LORD ROLAND BUTTERFIELD-JONES OF HRMSFORTH

I suppose you’re wondering why I have gathered you here tonight. A great mystery has occurred here this evening and I'm determined to get to the bottom of it. I’m speaking, of course, of how it happened that the keys to my automobile went missing. 

As best as I can surmise, my keys disappeared between 4 o’clock this afternoon and sometime during dinner. You see, after dinner I was feeling quite agitated and supposed that a refreshing evening drive might alleviate some of my gastrointestinal distress. I went to the foyer to retrieve the keys to my roadster, only to see an empty key hook and my own dour reflection in the hall mirror. Who could’ve taken my keys? My car?! I dashed out to the garage at once to find my sporty coupe safely ensconced. A curious matter—Who would want my keys but not my vehicle?

As you are aware, preparations for Lady Agatha’s bi-monthly formal gala—the one that clutters our main hall with the who's who of Whozzatshire—have caused quite a ruckus, with visitors swarming and flitting about and tradesmen traipsing through the house readying for tomorrow evening. Every caller entered through the main foyer and any one of them could have absconded with my key fob at any moment. But who had the motive? Which, if any, of these interlopers had incentive to commit Grand Theft Automobile Keys?

Let us review the goings-on of the day to suss out our key suspect. 

The party planner met with Lady Agatha early this morning to finalize details for tomorrow’s do. Then the decorator arrived to consult with Lady Agatha on wallpaper samples for the secret passages. Neither displayed any interest in motorcars. 

I observed little Henry here, after breakfast, occupying himself with a set of jingling keys whilst plopped in the middle of the floor of the solarium. When I inquired after them, our butler, Thinman claimed ownership and responsibility as he’d lent his pantry keys to the tot in an effort to quiet him during one of Lady Agatha’s headaches. Now, it’s possible Henry toddled his way into the foyer, found himself mesmerized by my keys up on their hook, climbed the antique coat rack, and snatched them down. Hmm. Come to think of it, I saw Thinman nervously polishing my keys and then return them to the hook just after lunch. Odd little man.

Dear Lady Agatha retired upstairs some hours ago with another headache and hasn't been seen since. Even the arrival of her latest acquisition—a cricket diamond? the snooker sapphire? badminton brooch? baseball tiara? Apparently something that warrants throwing a party on Wednesday night—could not rouse her from her bedchamber. Her maid has been skittering up and down the stairs, fetching all manners of ointments and concoctions for her. I suppose she could have borrowed my keys at the behest of Lady Agatha, though for reasons I cannot fathom.

Sir Waggleston, the renowned kleptomaniac, has often been discovered transporting treasures to his underground lair in the garden. At the time in question, however, he was relentlessly hounding the nanny.

(bends to address dog in baby talk)
Weren’t you, Sir Waggleston? Yes, you were. Yes, you were, my wittle snausage! Erf!

(clears throat, straightens posture)
Where was I? Ah! right. 

Now, the obvious suspect is my daughter Margaret, who came to me earlier in the day with a breathless desire to go driving, claiming it was a matter of life and death. Hmph, the death of my automobile most likely! I put the kibosh on that. She seemed anxious to get away—no doubt to see that lawyer chap who’s been courting her with his vulgar Latin poetry, that Don Juan, Esquire. She was not at dinner, presumably still sulking as young girls will. 

After that burst of drama, the locksmith came round to upgrade the locks on all the doors. Our last overnight guests complained about the large gaping keyholes into which wandering peepers could mosey. It seems unlikely that he would also replace the lock to my automobile, doesn't it?

Before I could escort him upstairs, the carpet man arrived to steam the Persians and air out the Orientals. He was followed closely by the party planner, who returned to inquire about the RSVPs from esteemed invitees. As I was about to direct him upstairs to Lady Agatha's room, he had the audacity to ask whether I would be fetching the prime minister from the aeroport before the event. Hmph. The PM can get his own ruddy ride from the aeroport for what we’re paying him. He’ll likely be boasting again about how he got his hands on the Duchess of Cambridge's newly augmented bust. He’s storing the emerald-encrusted effigy at his flat next door until it can be presented at her birthday gala next week—thankfully not being hosted here!

Speaking of my dearest neighbour, Thinman announced the arrival of plumbers who were summoned to the cellar for emergency repair on the crumbling clay sewer pipes that lay betwixt our manors. The PM is forever moaning about the crumbling pipes of democracy backing up the flow of progress. The irony would be delightful if it weren't so inconvenient.

I was on my way to investigate the situation, when the carpet man and locksmith descended the stairs with a lumpy, rolled up rug that I recognized from Margaret’s room. The rug man claimed Lady Agatha was sending it away for mending and so I sent them away.

As Thinman and I tried to steady ourselves from the whirling hubbub, an estate agent—bearing a remarkable resemblance to Margaret—wandered in unannounced. She just happens to be selling a comparable property down the lane and asked for a tour of ours. I led the charming agent through the rooms as we chatted about tomorrow’s event and all of today’s commotion, housing prices—it’s amazing what properties sell for these days! Maybe I can convince Lady Agatha to downsize if she ever tires of throwing these lavish parties. Nora, the agent was absolutely enamored of my old coupe out in the garage and insisted that I take her for a ride one day. Imagine that!

Well, with all this activity, it’s no wonder dinner turned my stomach into a dance hall!

After discovering that my keys had vanished, suddenly, the electricity went out! I heard three screams, including my own, followed by an eerie silence. I groped around for a torch and, upon finding one, made my way into the library. While turning to sit in my favourite armchair, I felt a sharp pain in my lower rib cage and fell to the floor. It was then I discovered that the key to my automobile had been in the left pocket of my waistcoat this entire time! Ha! Can you believe it? Oh, of all the things. Wait 'til I tell Aggie about this. 

(He puffs on pipe and wanders away.)

It’s 11:30 on a Friday night in the summer of 1989. Most young people are out with their permed mullets and jean jackets having Swayze-fueled times of their lives. I am in the backseat of my mother's car, with my mother sitting beside me, the front seat populated with my sister and her 22-year-old lunkhead boyfriend. We're on the first of many family road trips to Florida. We will make this exact same annual trip over the next five years, getting lost five more times. In the summer of 1991, when the lunkhead in the driver’s seat is my sister’s husband, I will be eager to point out how many times we’ve gotten lost in this exact same way. My mother, again seated beside me, will grimace knowingly and remind me that no one likes a know-it-all child. 

Here in 1989, rings and vows have not been exchanged, and yet my mother is allowing this young boy to drive her car. This car that isn’t quite paid off and that no one is allowed to eat or drink or fart in and whose insurance policy probably doesn’t cover this stubborn Southern good ol’ boy with a passion for spectator sports and music performed by men in cowboy hats and just happens to be dating her eldest daughter. The white Buick Century has dark burgundy velour interior and little chrome ashtray compartments in all the doors and the seat back. I like to play with the compartments, flipping the lids and thinking up other uses for them. I am not allowed to put gum or empty gum wrappers or coins or secret notes in these ashtrays. I am not really allowed to put my fingers into the ashtrays. But I do it anyway. There are four of these ashtrays in the back seat. My mother is not a smoker, but I suppose car manufacturers were not producing non-smoking cars in the 1980s. 

In winter, I am not allowed to draw shapes or letters on the fogged up windows with my greasy child-sized fingers.

But this strange boy with no sense of direction and a low threshold for distraction can drive this car. No one can even offer to take a driving shift when we go off track. My mother, with her phobias of highways and poor night vision, cannot trade places with the boy. My sister has yet to get her driving license and can only control the radio and the air conditioning, neither of which ever offer relief to the backseat.
The boy is a smoker, but he is not permitted to smoke in my mother’s car. He is, however, allowed to use his dipping tobacco. He expels the “dip-spit” into a 20-ounce bottle that used to contain Mountain Dew. This bottle will be full by evening's end. Despite the number of dip-spit vessels that will accumulate in her home in the future, dipping is somehow a more acceptable habit to my sister. In the years following this trip, the couple will argue over his smoking. My sister will outright forbid it in her house. Early on, the boy will accept the challenge to quit smoking along with the additional challenge of lifting weights in his afternoons after work. “Working out” comes to mean watching Ricki Lake (and sometimes pornography) and lifting the occasional beer can. He sneaks the occasional cigarette, but he's bad at hiding the evidence. When his dream of having a six-pack means drinking it all before dinner, he negotiates with his wife that he will stop smoking if he can grow a beard. She finds beards to be significantly less attractive than the prospect of a fit hubby but reluctantly agrees. He grows a beard and sneaks cigarettes. This will go on for too many years.

I cannot have a strawberry milkshake or french fries in this car. He can have an unopened bottle full of gross tobacco spittle tucked between his legs in the driver’s seat. 

It is always 11:30 that we find ourselves tired, grumpy, and carsick scanning the road with bleary eyes for cheap—but not sleazy—vacant motels. Given the option, the boy would just pull into a rest area and nap until sunrise. His girlfriend is in that delusional phase where she thinks the boy believes that she wakes up with hair done and a full face of fresh makeup, a phase will continue well into their marriage. She will not sleep in the car. My mother would stuff the boy in her trunk if she didn't fear the legal ramifications. I probably dozed off for an hour or so.

It's a four-hour drive to our destination, theoretically. We’re to meet up with his family and stay in their beachfront timeshare for the weekend. We leave after work and try to take a side highway to avoid rush hour on the interstate. The boy thinks he knows the route because his family traveled this way all the time when he was a kid. But he doesn't really know because normal kids don't pay attention to things like exit numbers and on-ramps. By the summer of 1993, I will know the exit numbers and recognize all the tiny town names and all the landmarks, like the abandoned convenience store with the fading old-fashioned Coca-Cola sign and that one boiled peanut stand and the other boiled peanut stand and that tree that looks like Sweetums from The Muppets. My mother will remind me that no one likes a smart-ass teenager. 

On this trip, I have brought a couple of Anastasia books by Lois Lowry, two notebooks, and my small collection of cassette tapes to play in my white portable boombox. When it gets too dark to read or write my secret story about the ginger boy from my class who also lives in our apartment complex, I sit in the dark and think about the ginger boy while pretending that this Phil Collins song is about us. 

The boy brings his radar detector in case he gets the chance to speed along these two-lane county roads. Along the rural back roads of lower Alabama, the detector blips rapidly, frequently. The boy talks of speed traps and cops with their quotas. Do policemen actually have quotas for tickets issued in any given period? Is this a myth perpetuated by bitter male drivers who feel unjustly targeted? The average American Redneck is apparently born with lead feet and an over-productive speed gland.

No one thinks to make travel plans at a time when perhaps policemen aren't eager to make their ticket quota. 

The AAA map might as well be written in Sanskrit as none of the car's four passengers can really make sense of the squiggly lines. Well, my mother can but refuses to interject this time. My sister will be mortified if our mother challenges the boy in any way. We are supposed to be a normal family, going on a vacation with his normal family and we are going to make normal family memories if it kills us. 

There's road work and lanes blocked around Troy, which slows traffic to a snail’s jog. The boy tunes in a football game on the radio, so he can alternate between yelling at the log truck in front of us and whatever displeases him about the game commentary. The boy always wants to listen to the game, despite the fact that the game always upsets him. My sister would rather listen to cowboy rock or Air Supply, but she’s letting him have his way because she wants him to believe that she is a Nice Person. However, she is desperate to get in on the yelling action, but instead of upsetting her boyfriend, she directs her anger at me and the Rock of the '80s compilation cassette I’m enjoying. The faint sound of Kenny Loggins' "I'm Alright", it seems, can be heard through the tinny headphones over the radio, road noise and redneck rage. She sweetly demands that I turn it down. She’s jealous because I have my tiny bit of freedom in my boombox while the boy listens to the game. 

My mother is quietly white-knuckled in the back seat with me, no doubt mulling what lie to tell in case of an accident. Will she have to somehow swap places with the boy to climb into the driver's seat if there's an accident or if the radar detector is faulty and we get pulled over? Will she claims he's her son and it’s okay for him to drive her car? Will she play the dithery old woman who doesn't know the rules? We can't afford a ticket or an accident or even an extra night at a motel that we're stuck with because it's too late to do anything else.
The boy gets lost after stopping for gas in Opp. We're halfway to Andalusia before my mother sneaks a look at the map and tries to gently hint that we've gone off track. The boy curses under his breath. My sister says we'll just turn around at the next exit. My mother will not suggest that there's another road that we can turn onto to get back in a southward direction because the boy insists on going the way his family drove for years and it really shouldn't take this long. There is nowhere to turn around for another 30 miles. My sister is panicked. My mother is anxious. The boy is probably frustrated and embarrassed. I am sleepy and bored because it’s dark and woodsy and that ginger boy is never going to think of me in a way that will inspire him to write Casey Kasem to play that Phil Collins song as a long distance dedication to me. In her panic, my sister turns around and hisses at me to turn off my goddamned music or else. Because absolute silence is a surefire cure for being lost on a rural road near midnight. At least we finally made it across the state line. 

By 1994, still no one has the foresight to book reservations at a place that's a reasonable distance between the highway and a gas station. Everyone still expects we'll make it to our intended destination in one night. At 11:30, we’re still approximately an hour and a half from our destination, theoretically. And we will still spend half an hour driving around a slightly bigger town in hopes of finding a cheap motel with a front office that's open late nights and doesn't terrify my mother. The only differences are the car is paid off and I can have a Coca-Cola in the backseat.

Eventually, we are freed from our motorized prison and drag our crumpled selves into a slightly bigger space to pass the time 'til daybreak. 

These are our traditions. This is what we call vacation. This is us having fun.