Time capsule

At first, I didn't know exactly what to write. I just sat there staring at the blank piece of paper on my desk. The room was stiflingly hot and silent. If I had been any kind of writer, I’d probably have written something along the lines of, 'A heavy silence descended over the room as the students commenced writing their letters. The year was 1982……etc. Etc.’ But instead, I just sat there, my head buzzing in the silence as if I were taking a high-pressure exam. Anyway, take it from me, it was a hot, listless afternoon.

Mr Beaumont called it a 'time capsule’. And you would think a time capsule would look more interesting, like something from a science fiction movie. Really, it was just an old metal military ammo box with the ammo type stencilled on the side in yellow lettering and all the stuff inside wrapped up in plastic. You know, to protect it from moisture. We were going to bury the time capsule that afternoon. After completing our letters. At least that was the plan.

Beaumont told us, as soon as the box was sealed, we should imagine fast-forwarding to the year 2018. Imagine 36 years passing in the blink of an eye, he said.

Some of us were like, oh yeah? Great. And what’s the point of all that? You bury a box full of junk for thirty-six years. Big deal. Beaumont cleared his throat and told us this project was about time. About getting us to realise that time is a relative concept. He asked us to think about what time means to an insect. A common housefly lives for 28 days, he said. So, can we agree that, for a housefly, an hour, let alone a day, is a hell of a long time.

Okay, sure. Flies don't have long lives but so what? At this point, Mr Beaumont makes a mark on the very edge of the blackboard and says, this here is when the Earth began, 4 billion years ago, at this very point in time. Then Beaumont walked slowly to the other side of the blackboard, dragging the chalk with him, drawing a continuous line across the board. And when he runs out of blackboard, he makes another vertical mark, on the opposite end of the line. Okay, he says, this is us today. This very moment in time, do you see? This line, from end-to-end, represents 4 billion years. This is the history of the world. Everything beyond this mark, he says, indicating the end of the timeline, the edge of the blackboard and beyond that, the corner of the room....is the unknown future. Your future. And mine. Of course, I'm older than you people so I will have a little less time to play with.

Okay, now think about this line again, he said. 350, 000 years ago the first homo sapiens appears. Somebody in the back of the room sniggered at the mention of the word 'homo' but he was alone. No one else joined in. We all liked Beaumont, or at least most of us did. We'd been in his class a year now and he had earned our respect. Besides which, we were about to graduate so a lot of the shenanigans that went on in high school were starting to seem pretty immature by then. The adult world beyond the classroom window was beaconing to us. It was unavoidable. We knew it. We were about to be part of it. Whether we were ready or not.

So when you think about it, Beaumont continued, dragging his eyes away from our regressive, sniggering classmate, human beings haven't been around for that long. In fact, taking into account the scale we are working with here, I would say we have existed for a period of time which is less than the width of this vertical chalk mark, he said, tapping blackboard. See what I'm saying? Your parents, your grandparents, your great-grandparents, your great-great-grandparents and so on….all those lives are represented in this one tiny period of time. This chalk mark. So now, think about your own life. In relation to what we've been discussing, it would seem your lives are going to be a microscopic blip, right?

So when you go, "Thirty-six years buried in the ground…groan….what’s the point? It's such a long period of time…groan....how is this relevant to us?” I say to you, thirty-six years is a long period of time compared to what? A housefly? A glacier? The life of our planet?
And it is completely relevant to you. To all of you. The lesson here is….life. Is. Short. It doesn't seem like it from where you sit but believe me, it is. You people need to remember that your parents....your grandparents, your great-grandparents....your great-great-grand parents…..all of them were your age once upon a time. They also assumed their lives would go on and on and on forever. An inexhaustible number of days. Of course, they did.....we all do. Because it's impossible to accept the inevitable. Isn't it?
Beaumont was always trying to blow our minds with these kinds of displays. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. He wasn't arrogant about it. You could tell. He just read a lot. He was a thinker and he was genuinely interested in life. Unlike many of the other teachers I have mentioned, those individuals whose shells of self-preservation had grown thicker and thicker with each passing term until they had become entombed in their own cynicism and routines.
We all settled down and started writing. Twenty-five heads bent down to the task, pens wiggling as the nibs scratched across pieces of lined A4 paper. A one-sided letter: that was all that was required from us.

I don't know what 2018 will be like but I can tell you one thing for sure....I'll be glad to leave this year behind. I want to get out of this school. I have no idea what I'm going to do with my life but I was tired of bells going off and rows of desks. As far as I was concerned, over the past year, this school, with its port-a-cabins, it's hot expanses of concrete divided by chainlink fences and it's drought thirsty palm trees had become something akin to visiting a bland factory five times a week. A place most of us had outgrown. Aside from Beaumont and Ms Jason, the other teachers were all neurotic basketcases who seemed to be barely in control of their own lives let along a class of adolescent students. Jesus. When I think about some of those teachers, the ones we psychologically broke, ever so flippantly, I can't help but feel a twinge of self-revulsion. We came at them without mercy like piranha attacking a cow that had unwittingly fallen into the Amazon river. We went right through some of them.

I looked out the window for a moment. The same view I've seen all year. The side of the auditorium. The gate. The traffic beyond on the main road. I had never written anything honest in my life. I liked writing but mainly I liked starting things. Notebooks. Little stories. However, I never got around to completing anything I'd started. That was the problem. I tried to keep a diary once but. I got about six pages in and then I gave up. It felt fucking ridiculous: secretly scribbling away in my bedroom. Dear Diary.....wank, wank, wank. I threw it away, embarrassed by the very fact it existed. I mean, as soon as you pick up a pen, you get the feeling someone is standing over your shoulder, watching you, judging you. And maybe what you're saying, or at least trying to say, will be misinterpreted. Or laughed at. It’s intimidating. For sure. And my short stories? Forget it. In my short stories, I came off sounding a bit like a John Steinbeck wannabe, all earnest and meaningful. Stoic beyond my years. And believe me, that kind of dust bowl stoicism just didn't jibe with the modern world.

To my left, sat Zoe Pritchard who was probably writing about how fucking fantastic her life would be from now on and how she'll marry some guy with a ridiculously square jaw. Some champ who plays tennis and wears Ralph Lauren underwear, who, in the long run, will probably turn into a fat slob and make her miserable anyway. Why is it that, at this moment when I am supposed to be soul searching and thinking about how short life is and how you have to make the most of every....blah, blah, blah.....all I can think about is....Zoe Pritchard's tits? See this is what Beaumont forgets: it's hard to live your life like Freddy Nietzsche when you have to walk around with a boner in your pants 24/7.
Speaking of which....from this angle, I can see that Zoe Pritchard's right boob is slightly squashed, pressed up against her desk. She is unaware of this, her face furrowed in concentration as she writes her letter to the future. Whenever she breathes in, her chest expands, applying more pressure to her already slightly pancaked boob. This creates an interesting swelling as her boob conforms to the space between her body and the desk. I can't see the right one but I'm pretty sure I prefer Zoe Pritchard's boobs in profile more than the straight on view (although seeing Zoe dressed in the school sports polo shirt tackling another player in a soccer match is pretty fucking amazing from any angle).
Now, as she sits back in her chair, tapping her pen against her lovely teeth, I can see that her boobs are being kept in place by a bra of undetermined colour beneath her preppy polo shirt. A bra that works to keep each breast immobile throughout the day but has enough engineered suspension and dynamic support so that, when her breasts brush up against something solid, like a desk or a chair, there is a certain amount of give.

This is the dual aspect of Zoe Pritchard's boobs: firm but adaptable. Adjustable even. They conform to the world but they also have a mind of their own. Once free of obstruction, they are quick to assume their original shape and position because they are moulded by elastic and spandex and cotton. This tension is a kind of magic to behold. Because of this suspension system, Zoe’s boobs seem to operate according to their own gravitational pull. They are like twin zeppelins tethered dreamily to her ribcage. Smooth, aerodynamic, suspended, balanced, streamlined, restrained but potentially explosive. Heavy but buoyant...all at the same time. Always straining to get free. Jesus. My parents talk about the Sistine Chapel...about standing in line to see it last summer and what an amazing work of art it was. In my opinion, Zoe's Pritchard tits are a far superior work of art. By a long shot.

Next thing I know, Beaumont is standing by his desk, saying, alright guys, time to start finishing up. You guys have five more minutes. I looked down at my piece of paper and I realise that all I'd been writing about was Zoe Pritchard's boobs. It was too late to do anything else so I quickly concluded by writing some stuff about making a positive impact on the world...about being a positive influence on my generation, dearly hoping this would balance out the smut. And then Beaumont was gathering up all the letters and we put them in the time capsule along with a few coins, a few newspaper articles about the space program and the Olympics, a Star Wars poster, a cassette tape with some music on it (we'd all contributed one song), photographs of our class and some other items. All of it wrapped in plastic. Stuffed into the box.

Next, we all traipsed out to the sports field and buried the time capsule in a shallow hole. It was almost like a funeral for a family pet. A canary. A hamster. The caretaker came along and filled in the hole with a shovel and that was it. Big deal. You could see the sceptical look on the caretaker's face as he patted down the earth. Like, that's right Mr life lesson, liberal teacher. You have your fun but tell me this....when are you gonna get around to teaching these little bastards something useful for a change? Anyway, after we'd buried our letters, another bell rang and we all headed off to somewhere else. Lunch maybe. Or biology. I can't remember now.

After that, it was only a matter of weeks before exams and then the last day of school was upon us. The final bell rang and we all went our separate ways. The second to last time I saw my classmates was at our graduation. Our hats went up in the air. Proud parents took photographs. Then, a short time later, most of us gathered once again, this time for a party held at Todd's Huston's parent's house which was down at the beach. After this, our chalk lines frayed and separated, becoming individual strands as we began moving into unchartered territory. The temporal zone beyond the edge of the chalkboard. Some of us prospered. Some of us died along the way. There were accidents and hereditary diseases and tragic mistakes. For some of us, time mysteriously and abruptly ran out and the line simply ended.

Astoundingly, Mr Beaumont is still alive, almost like he purposefully defied the onslaught of time to prove his point at the unearthing of the capsule and in doing so, guaranteed himself an additional fifty years above ground. I guess he was younger than we gave him credit for back then. To us, everyone over twenty had seemed ancient. Now, on this day that hatched in our collective futures, this day that arrived as Beaumont had predicted, with unexpected and frightening speed, Beaumont appeared before us as an unnaturally healthy looking 80 years old. Smaller than I remember, no doubt, but healthy never the less. He still seemed a fair way off from the infirmity that overtakes people at that age: the quiver that becomes evident in the eyes and voices. The uncertainty in the balance. The paper-thin skin covering the hands. In fact, Mr Beaumont's grip, when we shook hands seemed more assured and firmer than mine.

We all used to talk about what it would be like to be thirty or forty. Like it would never happen. But it has. Did you hear? Brien Clarence died with his father and brother in a camper van. Tragic. One of them left the gas stove on. Simple as that. Gone! Poof! Danielle Smith made good. Started her own business. She's super wealthy now. A different level entirely. James....you remember James? Well, he peaked sometime around his third year of college. It was all downhill from there. Now that his motivational speaking company has gone belly up, he's a sad sack with a garage full of tapes no one wants to buy, his alcoholism offset by a new and vigorous interest in our Lord Jesus Christ. How did life have so little to offer James?

At the reunion, they dug up and broke open the time capsule, the same metal box we'd buried. The school looked different than I remembered it. Updated with new glass-fronted buildings and covered walkways. We milled around the main auditorium. Outside it was windy but warm. This wind was coming off the desert and it kept threatening to slam doors shut. The Clash played inside the auditorium. Should I stay or should I go? This followed by more songs off the mixed tape we'd recorded. Echo and the Bunnymen. Soft Cell. Some fucking dolt had seen fit to insist of Genisis. We all drank wine, ate and caught up. We balanced our finger foods on small, square paper napkins. We were given the choice if we wanted to read our letters aloud. Some did. Some couldn't wait to get up there on the podium and start gushing about how great school had been. Best years of our lives and all that. I declined for obvious reasons. Maybe I was a coward. I couldn't decide. I talked to a forty-six-year-old version of Zoe Pritchard. That was surreal. Very strange indeed. The passage of time had left its mark on old Zoe. Kids. A failed marriage. A career reboot to pay for a respectable retirement. All the usual. Just like in a movie, I'd fooled around with her at Todd's parent's beach house the last time we'd laid eyes on each other, all those years ago. It had been alright. A lot of panting and fumbling in the dark. Music playing down the beach. The waves crashing. Sand getting into places it shouldn't. I don't remember too much about it because I was drunk. I suspect it wasn't so great for her or me. And now, unlike a movie, thirty years down the track at this reunion, Zoe and I did not conspire to slip away, to escape off into the darkness and drive down to the beach for a nostalgic quicky. To have another go as adults and explore where it might lead. No, we did not. We barely knew each other. Then and now. I think that last summer, back when we were young, we made a point to catch up a couple times after we'd first fucked. You know the kind of thing. Overly sentimental petting in teenage bedrooms listening to Edie Brickell. Worry over condom breakage. Trying to figure out if we actually liked each other. And then she faded away. To college. Same with me. Somewhere else. And then I forgot about her.

Almost.

Mingling, I tried not to get jealous of the people who'd made it. Or even those who exuded the confidence of success, false or otherwise, without trying. When I told them what I did, for a crust, some of my old classmates humoured me while others were genuine in their praise and astonishment, which, in a way, was far worse. I couldn't do what you do, they said, with a kind of wonder in their voices that pointed towards either my fortitude or complete stupidity. Or both. I stayed on for a few polite glasses of mineral water and then I headed off. Depressing as it was, I had the other half of my life to get on with. And I had a flight the following morning.

I drove down to the beach for a quick look. There was nothing waiting for me back at the hotel apart from a bar fridge I could not afford and probably some shite movie on TV starring the Rock. Todd's house was down the beach a bit, near the water's edge. Todd must have been wealthier than I remembered. Although having said that, the area looks a bit more depressed now back then. Back then, the senior class had trashed his house during that final party. Shameful behaviour really. Someone had used his parent's wooden lawn furniture to start a bonfire on the sand. Someone else had broken a sculpture worth a hell of a lot of money.

I killed the lights and stayed in the car. I had planned to do something vaguely symbolic like go down to the water and stand ankle deep in the surf, staring out into the blackness. I had the time capsule letter in my back pocket. Ten or even five years ago, most likely inspired by alcohol, I would have certainly followed through with this kind of improvised plan. Without hesitation. But now? It was pitch black out there, the white foam of breakers rushing into shore, the sound of each wave overlapping, becoming a continuous roar. These days, I did not feel like I needed to live every moment to it's fullest. And besides, the walk to the water would lead me down a set of graffiti-covered concrete steps and across a wide expanse of sand, the pier to my left. And it all seemed like too much effort and even slightly dangerous. This was, after all, a place where the local teenagers hung out. Where I had hung out once. I had no business being down there. As such, I remained where I was, cocooned and protected from the wind inside my white, midrange rental. And when the time felt right, I started the engine and drove away.

In the rush to make my flight, I must have left the letter in the hotel or in the rental. Maybe under the driver's seat with a muesli bar wrapper and some lint. Maybe somewhere else. I searched through my luggage twice once I got home, spreading everything out on the bed. No letter. A shame really: that letter had lasted all those years only to be chucked away by an intern at the car rental place. Or maybe a chambermaid.

I tried the exercise out in my own class. Or at least a modified version of it. By then I was burnt out and running out of ideas so what the hell? I kept the whole time capsule thing theoretical because my school wouldn't do anything like that. No way. Besides which, everything was digital now. As I explained, it was simply a writing activity. I got a lot of resistance of course. No one writes letters anymore sir, they all moaned, pretty much in unison, with one of two of my lazier students genuinely horrified by the idea of being forced to express themselves on paper. Once we got past this hurdle, once I convinced them there was some value in this activity, they started writing. They actually got into it. I told them they could say whatever. I wouldn't penalise them for profanity. I looked at the timeline I'd drawn up on the whiteboard. I was pretty pleased that I'd managed to pull it off. This was the first time I'd actually managed to get them all writing something down.