When it comes to movies and books, there is one genre that I love to hate. And that would be time travel. While its intention, I believe, is a good one, and its creation comes from a good place, no other genre can make me quite as unsure, unsettled, and unwaveringly uninterested.

First of all, the idea that someone can, in a blink, be transported back (or worse, ahead) to a strange time and place just flat out terrifies me. You mean one minute I’m walking along, minding my own business, and dropping in for a hot chocolate at the place down the street, and the next I’m in ancient Egypt, being told to walk across an enormous sea to some mysterious new land with neither hot chocolate nor whipped cream even a twinkle on the horizon? No thanks.

Or how about this — I’m sitting courtside at a Lakers game (of course I haven’t done that, but play along here) one moment only to find myself at the court of Henry the Eighth the next. Suddenly, instead of cheering at a pick and roll, I’m hoping I don’t get picked for the role of wife number seven.

Aside from the whole being displaced thing, there’s the chance that you could change the course of history in a bad way if you inadvertently alter some detail. What if I get transported to 18th century Boston and I accidentally step out in front of Paul Revere’s horse on that fateful night? One if by land, two if by sea all of a sudden turns into never mind, it’s too late. And there goes the American Revolution. What, you think it couldn’t happen?

And finally, there’s the whole confusion of it.

Take The Time Travelers Wife, for example. B. read it, I declined. But given that we talk to each other about every single thing every single day, he ended up telling me the story as he read it. By the end, I was crying hysterically. The idea that Clare spent her whole life up until she was an old woman waiting for Henry to return as a young man just left me in a pool of tears on the floor. But that wasn’t the worst part — having B. try to explain to me that Henry and Clare first met when she was a little girl and he was middle aged, but they married when she was older and he was a younger version of the man she had originally met — aghhh!

Or the original Back to the Future. Even though B. and I saw it on a very romantic date, these days it can make me run screaming from the room. Marty McFly going back in time to the 1950s was fun — until he met his future parents. Turns out his mother had a crush on him (ugh!) and Marty had to make sure that his parents met and fell in love so that he would be born in the future. Whaaat? I was one mixed-up, messed-up chick trying to figure that one out.

B. would love it if we could time travel. And while I would go anywhere with him, I really would prefer to stay in this dimension. The chances of finding ourselves in the Twilight Zone are just too great.

Good times.

© 2020 Claudia Grossman