Georgina Tierney
I’ve figured out time travel, and it’s honestly pretty simple.
You don’t need a mad scientist, or some sort of blinking technological monstrosity to zap you back in time. Specifically in the spirit of this view- point, you don’t even need a Time Turner or David Tennant swanning around in a phone booth. All you need to do is spend a year away at college, a summer spent at a distant internship andasemesterbackatthecollegeto make coming home feel like stepping into a perfectly preserved time capsule, admittedly with some irritating irregularities.
When I stumbled across the threshold, juggling four different bags of varying size and pointiness, everything looked pretty much the same as it had when I’d left in August. The mid-century furniture was all obediently where I’d left it, the walls were all the same color, the house plant the whole family hates but politely ignores was still clinging to life and my sister was lounging around in her favorite sweatpants, blasting Elton John.
I realize this is not everyone’s experience.There are younger siblings growing up fast, bedrooms being turned into exercise rooms or relationships that have fractured with growing distance and independence. But for me, when I go home, I am transported 400 miles west and about three years into the past.
Three years ago, I was a high school junior. My best friends were Erin, Ella, Esther (I know), Leah and Tessa. I hated my track teammates passionately, so much so that I man- aged to ignore them 99 percent of the time, and I spent a lot of my free time draped over the back couch, staring at either my phone or a book. When I go home now, I live my life in a sort of perpetual February high school weekend.Iwrapmyselfinblankets and lie around the back room. I text Erin, Ella, Esther, Leah, and Tessa. I exchange awkward eye contact with old teammates in sushi restaurants and movie theatres. I walk around in sweatpants deemed too embarrass- ing to take to college, wrapped in my grandmother’s old ponchos for extra insulation. When I go home, it’s like time has stood still.
I don’t know if other people experience this when they go back to wherever they were before Wooster. But I think there’s a lot to learn from this imperfect time travel, wanted or not.
The main thing is that, obviously, college changes you. It can be little stuff;the water at home tastes weird, your mattress that you slept on most of your life is now too hard. But it’s also big stuff. It’s waking up restless in the morning. It’s — not claustrophobia, that’s too strong a word — but a wanderlust, perhaps. I’ve been here. I’ve done this. Things are changing, and although the plants are the same and the walls are the same and all the mid-century furniture is right where I left it, I am different. And it’s incredibly cheesy while also being almost comically obvious, but sometimes you need a quick jaunt to the past to see how far you’ve come — and maybe, where you’re going.