Time travel, in real time

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Added: Sun. Jun 21, 2009 11:41am
Posted in: Living

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The moment had the definite feel of being in an H.G. Wells novel about a time machine.  Or a late-night college dorm session arguing the impossibility of time travel, with the theory that if you went back twenty years, you could conceivably meet a younger version of yourself on a street corner.  And what happens then?

But I met myself the other day, and had to laugh!  Bits and pieces of my past have been connnecting like crazy in random ways lately.  I just learned a few days ago that the church that I attended on occasion in Chicago when I was a little girl in anklets and pigtails was designed by the same architect, and decorated with the same Georgia pink marble, as the courthouse I work in today more than a hundred miles north.  Go figure!

But the "time travel" moment came when I had an idle moment and Googled myself.  Admit it, you do it once in a while too.  The usual stuff came up--the book, the op ed essay about deadbeat dads in the Washington Post, the website.  No news there.  But then I saw something I didn't recognize at all.  A newspaper article about a suburb of Milwaukee celebrating its past.  The reporter's byline was the same as mine.

Who the heck was this other journalist out there with my name?  Why had I never heard of her?  I clicked on the link and started to read.  Sure enough, the name was the same.  Same spelling.  Same middle initial.  I read through the story, a friendly piece about the festivities marking "Village Awareness Day" in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin.  None of it seemed familiar, until I checked the date:  October 23, 1978.

I laughed out loud.  The writer was me, the by-line was mine, carbon dating back to the time I was a college student in journalism school, working as a "stringer" writing features and news articles for the daily Milwaukee Sentinel.

So I guess you CAN go back in time and meet yourself all over again! 

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