Me & I Through Time

By Elizabeth Fodor

What if you could go back in time and live with your younger self for a week? Me & I Through Time is a time-travel comedy that follows one woman's journey back in time as she unlocks a mysterious portal in Grand Central Terminal, transporting her back to 1978 where she literally comes face to face with her 20-year-old, bell-bottom-wearing self.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Painted Shoes Press
• Release date: Oct 24, 2017
• ISBN: 9780578198576

Book preview

Me & I Through Time

Me & I Through Time

By Elizabeth Fodor

Copyright

Copyright © 2017 by Elizabeth Fodor

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

First printing: 2017

ISBN:  978-0-578-19857-6

Published by:

Painted Shoes Press

New York, NY

[e-mail]

Edited by: MJ Kasper

Cover Design: Eric Rosner  (www.erosner.com)

*Any mentions of celebrities, celebrity situations, and/or commercial products in this book are strictly for entertainment purposes and have no basis in actuality. Likewise, any reference to Broadway shows and/or feature films is strictly for entertainment purposes.

Dedication

Dedicated to Julius Fodor.  Wish I could go back in time for a visit.

Special thanks to: 

Agi F., Ilse F., Christine R., Jeanette P., Erica R., Maria D., Billie W., Mark D., Jason G.

CHAPTER 1: Fame is For Famous People

Everything unraveled the day I turned fifty for the second time. The first time I turned fifty was pretty ordinary, I'd say. The third time?  Well, I’ll get to that later.

It all started when I went back to 1978 and lived with my 20-year-old self for a week. (If ya had a dime for every time, right?) But I didn't go on purpose, mind you.  It turns out Grand Central Terminal is one of the largest time portals in the world.  And seeing as how I’d commuted to and from Grand Central every day for years, I guess it was inevitable that I'd find myself under its spell.

I always thought there was something special about Grand Central.  Its cavernous tomb-like belly, its magical starlit ceiling, its muffled sea of conversation; it always felt kind of dream-like.  Not to mention the stone-carved motifs, the sun-drenched catwalks, and last, but certainly not least, the opal-faced four-sided clock.  Classic.

As a native New Yorker, I was always tempted to tilt my head back and gaze at the constellations on the ceiling, but there was always the fear that thugs would take me for a tourist and mug me...which is a fear well-instilled in me by my overly suspicious, highly strung mother. 

It wasn't until many years later that I finally had the guts to look up.  And you know what?  There's some pretty amazing stuff up there!  (And I'm happy to report that I was not, nor have I ever been, mugged.)

Anyskadoo...in the summer of 2008, I found out just how special Grand Central truly is.

Oh, but first, sorry, I should introduce myself.  My name is Hannah Tibbit.  Hannah Eve Tibbit.  I'm 59 years old, which is the equivalent of being invisible, these days.  I was an advertising executive in the heart of Times Square, but that was before I went back in time and changed my past.  (I know, I didn't know you could do that either.  The old adage you can't change the past is wrong.)

Now where was I?  Oh, right, it was August of 2008.  At that time, I was living in my little cottage in Westchester, NY: a wealthy suburb of New York City.  Not sure what made me, a born-and-raised Manhattanite, want to move to the suburbs other than it's just what people who made a bunch of money in the city did; they moved out of the city so they could display their wealth by spending scads of commute-money trying to get back in on a daily basis.

I lived alone, never been married, and was Senior Co-Executive Vice President of Adco Inc., one of the largest advertising agencies in the country.  Correction:  I didn't live entirely alone.  I lived with my morbidly obese tiger cat, Catastrophe. He was pretty much a throw pillow that you had to feed and take to the vet every now and then. But, he was the only one who really understood me...and loved me regardless.

Needless to say, I was miserable.  I hated my life: my career, at this point, felt hollow and meaningless, I resented my family, I pretty much unfriended every friend I ever had for one reason or another, and I had never had a romantic relationship that lasted longer than 6 months.  (Well, to be honest, I did have one relationship that lasted for eight, but he was in a coma those last two months so I'm not sure I can count that as a breakthrough.)

The funny thing is, this miserable life I was leading was all because of this one, tiny, hasty decision I made back in August of 1978.

I had trained all my childhood to be a dancer. Well, to be fair, I took several dance classes and watched every Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie a hundred times a year, mimicking every routine.  As far as I was concerned, I had been trained by the best in the biz...only, they didn't know it.

That's all I ever wanted to be:  a dancer.  Well...a professional dancer.  No, wait-- a FAMOUS dancer.  That's what I wanted most of all.  I dreamed of becoming one of the greats, the next female Gene Kelly or Bob Fosse, and seeing my name in lights, signing autographs on the street...You get the picture.

My mother, however, thought all these dancing lessons were simply good for hand-eye coordination and a great way to keep me occupied.  Translation: out of her hair.  But, as far as she was concerned and despite all my declarations, it wasn't a life.  My response would always be the same, But it was a life for Fred and Ginger.  To which my mother would reply, That's different, dear, they were famous.

I know.  My mother never seemed to realize that people aren't born Broadway stars.  On the other hand, she did accidentally give me my first introduction to paradoxical philosophy.  And strangely enough (though, I will never admit this to my mother), that is actually how the universe works: in order to have the things you don't yet have, you first have to be a person who already has them.  Like the old saying goes, you need money to make money.  But, the question always is, how do you get the money to make the money in the first place?

It wasn't until recently that I began to understand my mother from all those years ago.  I began to wonder if she was stumped by this question just like everybody else and, like most everybody else, had simply given up.  So, what I mistook for blind pessimism could really just have been broken-hearted resignation, which, in my opinion, is worse.

It suddenly occurred to me that she must have had dreams of her own, dreams that felt so real they could’ve reached up and smacked her.  She always talked about how much she loved gymnastics, fashion and making clothes, but became a nurse instead because it was steady and came with benefits. But, I could only assume that when one thing didn't lead to another, she descended into that windowless prison of resignation and became a person whose dreams would never come true, who lived in a world where gifts and miracles were showered unto other people, but not her.  Never her.

I guess it's fair to say that the apple didn't fall far from the tree.

My father, on the other hand, was the family optimist.  He inherited his father's candied popcorn factory's motto: Make life sweeter and cornier.  That motto is all he inherited because his father's factory burned to the ground in the Great Popcorn Popper Explosion of 1925.  Up until a week later, people claimed to find strewn candied popcorn for miles around.  The kids loved it.

My dad would always say to me, you can have anything you want so long as you want what you have.  I hated that saying.  It made my brain itch.  It's the you have to have money to make money conundrum all over again.  How can I want what I have when what I really want is what I DON'T have?  And what do I do, pretend to be happy until I get what I really want?  Fake-out the universe, lure it in with forced affirmations of gratitude and joy, and then snag my rewards the moment the universe isn't looking?  Something tells me the universe isn't that gullible. 

Funny thing is, that's exactly how I was living my life.  I never really understood that fully until I sat across from my 20-year-old bell-bottom-wearing self and watched me almost make the biggest mistake of my life...for the second time.

And then, there's my little sister, Elle.  How do I put this delicately?  She's the luckiest, most self-involved rich bitch you'll ever meet.  Her wealth is by marriage, only.  She married Alastair T. Matheson IV.  And together, they spawned two precocious children, Haley and Henry.  The twins. 

Oh, but don't think because Elle is rich that she doesn't work; she's, in fact, a professional backhanded complimenteur.  She's mastered the art of making sure people get how inferior they are to her so when they receive one of her compliments they're stunned into silence by a compliment-that-sounds-like-a-compliment-but-feels-like-an-insult.

Actually, I used to feel sorry for Alastair; he's such a quiet, sweet man who grew up without a mom and was dragged to a different city every other year.  I could never figure out how he could stand Elle's constant demands and snide comments.  What did he see in her?  But, then I realized that they're actually perfect for each other.  For every control freak there's a freak in need of being controlled.  So, I guess Elle's rigidity must have looked like a safe haven of stability and predictability in Alastair's eyes.  I mean, at the very least, he knew what to expect from her, and I suppose that gave him comfort.  I guess that's what we all crave at our core, isn't it?  Certainty, stability, purpose?

I know, I know, get to the part where I time-traveled.

Ok, so, I had just gotten off the train at Grand Central on my way to work one morning in the summer of 2008.  Well, not just any morning, it was the morning before the big day...Dooms Day...the day I was to turn fifty. 

I was in a rush.  I have no idea why I was in a rush, but that just seems to be the New Yorker way.  Even when you have loads of time to get somewhere, you inevitably find yourself swept up in the racing energy of the city, weaving around other pedestrians with an ‘I've got places to be’ attitude.

Anyway, this strange feeling came over me, almost like déjà vous.  I was suddenly aware of my own sub-conscious, my own inner machinery, my own man behind the curtain, if that makes any sense at all.  I noticed that there wasn't just ONE internal voice going on, but several.  One voice would say something like, hurry up, you're going to be late, and another voice would argue, no you're not, you've got plenty of time, and another would marvel, wow, you're having a whole conversation entirely in your head...with yourself.  It was as though there was a trinity of selves living within me: the antagonist, the protagonist, and the observer.

Well, whatever it was, it felt odd.  I even felt a little dizzy.  But, like a good New Yorker, I blamed it on the heat and the bus fumes.

Suddenly, my phone buzzed from my bag; it was Paige, my assistant.  And with a touch of the Talk button, all that self-awareness (or should I say, selves-awareness) dissolved and my workday had begun.

When I arrived at the office, Paige, my astrology-obsessed, Goth-dressed, 24-year-old assistant, immediately greeted me. She was waving a birthday card that could land a plane it had so much glitter on it. She squealed, Happy birthday, Ms. Tibbit, like an excited puppy.  It being the day before my birthday, I pretended not to see the card and walked straight into my glass and steel cage...er…office.

Paige came in shortly after to hand me my mail and go over the scads of important meetings I had that day.  (Important, pppfff. You don't know important until you find yourself in 1978 with money that hasn't been issued yet.)  But, first, she insisted on boring me with her astrological forecast of the day; she warned me that my birthday landed on a Mercury Retrograde that year and that I needed to be extra cautious with any travel plans.  All I could do was blink at her.

[A Mercury Retrograde is a cosmological illusion where the planet Mercury appears to be moving backwards for a short period of time...usually for about three weeks, four times a year.  Astrologically speaking, Mercury Retrogrades are notorious for causing travel snafus, reversals of all kinds, and sudden reappearances of people from your past. You see where this is going.]

But, being the cynic I was, I dismissed all this nonsense and then swigged a glass of Alka-Seltzer with a Valium to calm my nerves and eradicate my vice-grip headache.  (Funny how I didn't believe in astrology or the possibility of time travel, but had total and complete faith in artificial chemical compounds I couldn't even pronounce. Go figure.)

Aaaanyskadoo...

After I put out a hundred fires in the Fatlip Lip Gloss for Lipless Women meeting, the Sonogram Ads meeting (where babies are exposed to product ads while still in the womb), the Why Do We Have So Many Meetings meeting (I'm not even kidding), and the Wrinkle Free 15: Botox for Teens meeting (I wish I was kidding about that one), I came back to my office tired and drained and looking for some kind of distraction, something to remind me that there was more to life than persuading people to buy stuff they don't need.

I glanced over at the pile of mail on my desk, and one bright red handwritten envelope caught my attention.

Inside was