• 21 Year-Old Me

The following is a true story modified to fit the way I believe it should have unfolded.

(21 year-old me is traveling alone in Ireland. I show my passport at Shannon Airport)

Man checking my passport: (points at my passport photo in which I am 18) Is this you?
21 year-old me: Yeah.
Passport man: You look…different.
21YOM: It’s me.
Pervy passport man: Yeah, but you’ve changed…You’ve gotten…amazing.
21: Heh, I’ve aged.

(Record scratch, tires screech, jukebox stops. A glimmer in the air materializes into a portal. Present-day me rips through portal and jump-tackles 21 year-old me.)

Present-day me: (throwing punches) SHUT THE FUCK UP.
21: Ow, ow, ow. I mean, I stay up really late pulling all-nighters for my college essays. Ow. I get bags under my eyes. OW.
PDM: (kneeling on throat of 21 year-old me, timing shouts in sync with face-punches) FUCK. ING. SHUT. UP.
21: I don’t look anything like that picture!
PDM: (gripping throat of 21 year-old me, trying to locate lethal pressure point) YOU DO YOUR EYEBROWS DIFFERENT AND THAT’S IT.
21: (struggling for breath) I still had baby fat.
PDM: (punch, punch) YOU WANNA SEE FAT? (lifts shirt, unzips jeans, beer belly tumbles out, undulating onto 21 year-old me’s face) THIS IS FAT.
21: That won’t happen to me, I metabolize like a machine.
PDM: Until the age of 26, you entitled beast.
21: Plus, I found one gray hair when I was–
PDM: (removes beanie)
21: OH PLEASE GOD, NO.
PDM: WE DON’T BELIEVE IN GOD ANYMORE. (gets up, retrieves pitchfork from portal)
21: NOOOO.
PDM: (sticks pitchfork in the stomach of 21 year-old me and picks 21 year-old me up like a sausage off a plate, carries pitchforked 21 year-old me across the airport into airplane to London, awaits take-off, opens emergency exit on airplane, hangs still-pitchforked 21 year-old me out of the exit, pushes 21 year-old me off the pitchfork with my foot, sending 21 year-old me careening into the Irish Sea) YOU WILL QUICKLY RECOVER FROM THESE INJURIES BECAUSE YOUR FIRM YOUNG BODY IS STILL RESILIENT TO MORTALITY. NEVER SPEAK AGAIN UNTIL YOU’RE AT LEAST 30.

My passport eyebrows circa 2002.

One cool thing about this post is that some later version of me can travel back in time and also do this to the relatively less disgusting version of me that wrote this.