Time Travel

I've been wondering about my fascination with time travel and parallel universes. I'll devour most any fictional representation of such phenomena. I've seen the entire Back to the Future trilogy too many times to count--I even remember where I was when I saw the first one. Peggy Sue Got Married, Me Myself I (with Rachel Griffiths), any of the newer Star Trek series, Quantum Leap... And now the wonderful Thursday Next novels by Jasper Fforde, and I'm finally reading Diana Gabaldon's Outlander. A Wrinkle in Time. The Wizard of Oz. The Chronicles of Narnia. The British children's books by Nesbit.

Maybe it's the possibilityof miraculous launching into another place? I used to imagine such possibilities whilst trudging along on my paper route when I was 13. Always the procastinator, I would be moving along at a snail's pace imagining that I could suddenly find myself at the end of the route, the whole job complete. What's the word for this? Ah, yes--laziness.

Blame it on episodes of The Twilight Zone viewed while I was still in my formative years. Of course, that means that parallel universes are as likely (more, perhaps) to be dystopias as utopias. I still wonder, occasionally, if when I open a door there won't be a magical world on the other side. Usually, however, "magical" means terrifying. Perhaps I haven't progressed beyond that childhood stage when we fear that if we wish something, it will happen. Or maybe I just need to get off this chair and get busy with my day.