Time. I sat in my cubicle at work and watched intently as the second hand on the clock slowly ticked forward. If I could only have turned back the hands of time, how much different my life might have been.
My name is Nick Evers. I am fifty-two years old and like so many others of my generation, I felt lost in a world had that changed so much since 1967. It was the year that was referred to as the summer of love. I turned sixteen that year, and it began a time in my life that I would never forget. Life was full of wonder and excitement. Each day was another journey into the unknown, where another new experience waited in the shadows.
Lately, whenever I wasn’t focused on some particular task, I found myself daydreaming about the distant past. Back then, I thought youth was eternal and that I would never get old. The future went no further than the next three weeks of my life. Now I detested the thought of growing older and the more than likely prospect of having a medicine cabinet full of prescriptions to accompany me. I wanted to know who had the audacity to name those the golden years. I had been married for seven years and divorced for the last ten. Now I lived in a one-bedroom apartment with my cat Lucy. I had found her two years ago on a Thanksgiving morning, wandering alone in a nearby park. She couldn’t have been more than three months old. She was small and scrawny but had lots of life in her eyes. After that we were inseparable, and unlike my ex-wife, she never complained and always looked forward to my coming home.
I leaned back in my chair and let my eyes wander to the picture of me and my best friend Spencer Fontaine. It was taken in the early part of the summer of 1969, at a park not far from my parents’ house. We were leaning on my Mustang convertible. Spencer had a half-smoked joint between his fingers and a smile on his face wider than the car grille, compliments of some of the finest weed. We had met in junior high school and within a year, we had become the best of friends. When the Age of Aquarius arrived in the summer of 1967, we both embraced it to the fullest. We smoked weed together for the first time and when the moment came to experience the mind- blowing effects of LSD, we had no qualms or reservations about ingesting the pills that would alter our outlook on everything around us.
The music of the era was the backdrop for the hundreds of events and experiences that would come to pass. It was woven into the fabric of our lives. In the summer of 1969, the year we graduated from high school, a festival took place in Bethel, a small town in downstate New York. Woodstock was the festival that spoke for a generation. It was an event that was more about the audience than the performers. We opted not to attend because we had already seen most of the bands that would be performing at Woodstock, and the few we had not seen would sooner or later pass by. But that colossal event had little to do with the bands. It was the Age of Aquarius, all coming together for one last fun filled weekend. It was an experience that all who attended, still carry with them to this day. It was not just a concert of legend; it was the concert of legend. It was the one against which all others would be judged, and no card-carrying hippie would have wanted to miss it. We did.
That fall I had attended a local community college, but I soon lost interest and dropped out after the first semester. I had absolutely no idea of what I wanted to do with my life after high school. I only knew that I should continue my education, but I had no plan and that in itself made for a bad start. I signed up for the liberal arts program which turned into grade thirteen. It was English, history and language all over again. I felt like I was learning nothing new, or more importantly, nothing that would qualify me to do anything in the years to follow. Life was the course I wanted to take, so I dropped out, determined to experience life to its fullest. But at some point the fun stopped.
It wasn’t until many years later that I realized what I should have done with my life. I had been invited by my younger sister to visit her at the elementary school where she taught. After spending the day in her classroom it became quite clear to me. Teaching young minds and helping guide them through an important part of their lives had to be one of the most rewarding careers there was. Perhaps not that early in the learning stage, but at the point where students would be making the kind of decisions that would affect their futures. The kind of decisions I never made. I would have liked to blame someone else, but the guilty party stared back at me every morning in the bathroom mirror. My parents had told me on many occasions that anything worth having, was worth working hard for. And what did they know that an eighteen-year-old did not? As it turned out, they were right about nearly everything.
That mantra also applied to the one girl in high school I so desperately wanted, but whose striking beauty and charm kept me at arm’s length, for fear she would say no if I asked her for a date. I had met Lilly during my sophomore year in high school. She was an earth mother in every way. She was kind, compassionate and had the extra luxury of being the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She had a milky white complexion, long tresses of autumn brown hair and elfin features. If I could construct the perfect woman, it would be a duplicate of Lilly. Her very presence was intoxicating. Yet I never asked her out, even though we shared some of the same classes and once had skipped an afternoon of school together. We had purchased a bottle of wine and had laughed the afternoon away by a small stream that ran through the woods near our school. I should have swallowed my fear and asked her for a date that day. It may be that she wanted me to but I will never know, and not knowing as it turned out, was worse than hearing her possibly say no.
More and more I had begun to look back over my shoulder at what was. I was not interested in the road before me, only the one I had already traveled. This seemed to intensify after I turned forty. All my regrets seemed to roll around in my head like so many clothes in a dryer. Most of all, I missed being young and living in the late sixties. I missed the big circle of friends I once had, that over time, had shrunk to but a few. Spencer and I had talked many times about how fantastic it would be if we could travel back in time and relive the parts of our lives we missed the most. How we could change the negative experiences into positive ones, or better yet, avoid them altogether. But that was not likely to happen anytime soon.
With a loud sigh I turned as the sounds of heavy feet entered my cube. It was Marge, the sales team supervisor. She was an overly large person for whom nearly no one seemed to care. Being in sales was a tough job. Whatever you sold was never enough and when you did meet all your goals, then even more was expected of you. It seemed that Marge’s main job was to antagonize and irritate everybody around her. Because of her immensity she was often referred to as Marge the barge when she was not within earshot.
Upon entering my cubicle, she immediately pounced. “Your performance level has dropped considerably Evers,” she said with a hint of smugness in her voice.
Too bad your weight hasn’t, I thought to myself.
“You have thirty days to bring it back up to an acceptable level,” she continued. “If you do not, then you will be put on a probationary level that could lead to your termination if not corrected.”
I sat in silence and glared back at her.
“So, what are you going to do about it?” she demanded.
“Well Marge,” I said, rising to my feet, “being that it’s Friday and quitting time, I’ll have to get back to you on Monday. Have a nice weekend,” I said in my most condescending voice as I pushed by her on my way to the door.
“You better start getting serious quick,” she shouted after me.
She was one of those people who are so unhappy at home that they feel the need to come to work and spread their misery on their fellow employees. It makes them feel better about themselves. I really could not tolerate her or the job much longer.
After walking out of the building, I glanced up at the darkening sky. It was only 4:00 in the afternoon, but the dense dark clouds made it look like dusk. Lightning blazed in the distance. Mother Nature gave some of the best light shows on the planet. Huge bolts of lightning danced across the horizon. Moments later, an enormous earthshaking crack of thunder split the sky and with it came a fierce downpour. I turned my face upwards and welcomed the feeling of the heaven-sent rain that pelted my face, as if it could wash away all the mistakes and bad decisions I had made in my life and all the subsequent problems they had caused. I climbed into my car and started driving in the torrential rain, pondering what to do next. I had some time to kill before meeting Spencer for a drink. He said he had something to tell me and I hoped it was good news. I found myself heading towards the park and pulled over just inside the entrance. Spencer and I had practically lived here at one point in our lives. This was one of two places that I frequently visited when life seemed to overwhelm me. The other was a reservoir that stood high above the city, just a few short blocks away. Time stood still for me here. I could close my eyes and be right back in one of those summers from the distant past that I thought would never end. The rain was just a drizzle now and there was no one around but me, or so I thought.