Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist and Hayden Planetarium director, said that time is the fourth dimension, but then again, he’s the one who said Pluto wasn’t a real planet.
In Ms. Hanson’s tenth grade science class, she taught us that Pluto was the last planet in our solar system. And when tested, I got that answer correct. Didn’t get much else right, but that answer I did. Then one day, years later, good old Neil comes along and says otherwise.
Me? I’m gonna keep believing what Ms. Hanson taught us. But I digress, this story isn’t about Neil and the demotion of Mighty Pluto to a micro planet. This story is about Time. And it’s about time we get on with it.
Time is a construct of the mind, measured by many different methods since humans have walked the Earth. In the beginning, we woke and went out from our homes, foraging for food at sunrise returning before its setting. Over millenniums, time has been measured by seasons, phases of the moon, rotations of the Earth and its orbits around the sun, and a dizzying array of chronometers.
But what if?
What if time — and how it’s measured — has a greater meaning than just when to wake up, work, eat, plant crops, or sleep? Neil said the fourth dimension is time, and even though I’m still mad at him for the demotion of Mighty Pluto, I tend to agree but with a slight modification of his theory.
For me, time has always been a place.
This isn’t an unproven theory of mine. I have proof.
If The Wife and I drove down Flamingo Street today, she would see houses, the vacant lot next to neighbor Thomas’s house, and a cul-de-sac at the bottom of a steep hill that ends in front of Old Ms. Crabtree’s house.
But what she wouldn’t see would be my three brothers, The Sister and me playing in our front yard. She wouldn’t see Bubba Hanks, Down the Street Bully Brad, Goofy Steve and all the other kids that I grew up with. The grand dirt clod and water balloon battles we had through our yards, our using ramps to jump bikes, or sliding down the backside of a snow-covered Flamingo while clinging to the Disk of Death would be beyond her ability to see.
And all the adventures and misadventures that we had for those seven magical years spent growing up on that street would be invisible as we drove by.
But I would see them all.
The Wife can’t travel to the fourth dimension of Flamingo, but I can. You see, I never really left. Hopefully, if my writing is descriptive enough, she can read the stories and travel back to see all the adventures and misadventures we had a long, long time ago while growing up on that old familiar street not so far away. Just like you can, Dear Reader, here each week.
And, if I’m correct that time is a place, then could Tomorrow be another destination? If I can bring The Wife, Little One and Sweet Caroline and all our friends with us, Tomorrow is a destination that I want to visit.
Once in the Land of Tomorrow, what is the first thing I would do? I’m gonna find a way to change the Mighty Pluto back into a planet — then call Neil and tell him what I did.
[Rick Ryckeley has been writing stories weekly in The Citizen since 2001.]
