I grew up in the 1980s when the Back to the Future movies reigned supreme. Thus I was pretty psyched when I stumbled upon a time machine. What follows is the account of my adventures in said time machine.
My first inclination was to see what the world was like at the time I was born. So off I went to the year 1980.
Me: Hello people of 1980.
People of 1980: Hello!
Me: I have come to tell you of the wonders of the future. Wait til you hear about the Internet! It’s wonderful!
People of 1980: Forget that, tell us about the flying cars. It must be so sweet dude.
Me: Um, actually we don’t.
People of 1980: Do they have wings that come out or is it just jet propulsion stuff?
Me: Yeah, about that.
People of 1980: Does Volkswagon make flying cars? Are they little? Do you get to punch people when you see them?
Me: OK, we don’t have any flying cars. I’m sorry, they don’t exist yet. Everybody still has to wait in traffic and stuff just like you do now.
People of 1980: OK well then we’re going to leave now so we can prepare for a decade of ridiculous clothing and music. Bye.
Me: Wait, I know of some stocks you should. The internet’s gone mobile. Oh screw it. Appreciate Alf, you have no idea how much you’ll miss him when he’s gone.
Well, after that apparent failure I figured I would travel to a time I would be more appreciated-500 years back to the year 1502.
Me: Hello people of 1502.
People of 1502: Hello!
Me: I have come to tell you of the wonders of the future. We have electric lights, telephones that allow us to talk to people across the country, all sorts of technological advances! The future is wonderful!
People of 1502: Wow that’s great! We would love to have those sort of technological advances! Please, tell us how these marvels work.
Me: Oh? Yeah, um. well, let’s see here. There are electrons and they move around and do stuff and, yeah, well if you connect two coffee cans with a piece of string that can be pretty cool.
People of 1502: It seems that you do not even understand your own technology. Why would the send the dumbest of the future back in time to visit us?
Me: Yeah, well I’m not dumb. I majored in religion in college, so I don’t really know too much of the engineering stuff if you know what I mean.
People of 1502: No, that’s fine, we understand now. Please, tell us of the theological advances that have occurred.
Me: Yeah, about that. Well, pretty soon there’s gonna be a big old ‘reformation’ that’s basically gonna split up the Christian faith into a lot of different groups. Other than that there haven’t really been too many advances in that field per se. There’s a lot of fighting and killing each other and stuff between different religions. Well, I guess it’s just a lot of the same.
People of 1502: Well, in that case we’re gonna go leave and do whatever it is that people do in 1502.
Me: Yeah, I guess I’ll just leave then.
It was then that I realized that perhaps I had the wrong idea all along. Rather than tamely travel into the past I would boldly venture into the future. To 2052!
Me: Hello people of 2052!
People of 2052: Hello!
Me: Why are you wearing lint filters on your heads?
People of 2052: Uh, why wouldn’t we?
Me: Oh. Well, I’ve come to see the flying cars!
People of 2052: Yeah, we figured. Unfortunately we’re still working on that. On the upside we’ve perfected our mobile refrigerator technology!
Me: Aw, son of a monkey. That’s really weak guys.
People of 2052: Yeah, well it turned out to be a lot harder to do than anyone thought.
Me: Yeah. Hey, you wouldn’t all happen to have “Comma” as your middle name, would you?
People of 2052: Nope.
Me: Weak. Really, really weak guys. Suck monkeys.