Chapter 1

The first thing that I noticed when I woke up the next morning was that the bed squeaked. Any little movement caused a chorus of squeaks, creaks and groans. For some reason this caught my attention, but it appeared that on this bright morning my brain, which was usually at its best early in the morning, wasn’t fully engaged. It wasn’t until I really looked at the sunlight reflecting off the cheap wood grained paneling on the wall that I realized that something was seriously wrong.

The jolt of adrenaline that I got from seeing cheesy paneling where there should have been cheesy wallpaper — that wallpaper was on our list to replace, real soon now — finished the process of waking me up, which brought the squeaking bed back for my consideration. Our bed didn’t squeak. It didn’t have any metal parts to make those sorts of noises. I felt a bit like Arthur Dent looking in his mirror and remarking on the word ‘yellow’ — there was something kicking around in my head trying to get my attention but it hadn’t gotten the synapses lined up to do the job. At least it hadn’t until I rolled over to ask Cathy what was going on.

I barely bit back a scream. I was lying on the lower of a set of trundle beds, with my older brother, Dave, still asleep in the upper bed. A much, much younger version of my older brother.

I distinctly remember shutting my eyes and thinking that I was having some sort of exceptionally vivid dream. After thinking about it for a moment though, I realized that I could only once remember knowing that I was dreaming while I was doing so — and that I’d woken up as soon as I realized I was dreaming. I opened my eyes and that damned paneling was still there.

Okay, if it was a dream then I figured that I wasn’t escaping any time real soon so I might as well go along with it. If only it had been that easy. Nothing that I saw except the bed and my brother rang any bells at all. I didn’t seem to have anything to guide me in figuring out what was next on the agenda of my dream world.

Given how Dave looked I wasn’t too surprised when I got up and found that I was a much, much younger version of Jeff Larson. No middle aged spread. No hair on my legs. No hair on my chest — not that there was ever all that much. My hand quickly confirmed that I was missing my beard and mustache — old friends that I hadn’t been separated from since getting out of the Navy 25 years earlier. Given everything else I was pretty sure that if I checked I’d find that I was less than 4’6” tall. I was always short and didn’t get to 5’ until well after I hit puberty. A quick check inside my underwear — other than my bout in the Navy I hadn’t slept in my underwear for more than 30 years! — confirmed that puberty was still in my future. Damn!

It was while standing there taking stock that I finally started to get a feel for where I was. Outside the open bedroom door I saw still more wood grained paneling, but this paneling was buckled around a stud. I vaguely remembered getting into a fight with Dave once and getting tossed into the wall across the hall outside our bedroom door. I didn’t remember what precipitated the fight but he was already well on his way to 200 pounds, and he had picked my 75 pound body up and simply thrown me across the room and through the doorway.

Wracking my brain I was pretty sure the fight had happened when I was nine or ten years old. That, in turn, meant that I was in a trailer — no, we didn’t call them mobile homes back then — in Denver in the early 70’s. Once again, something was kicking around in the back of my mind, trying to get my attention. The difference was that this time it got through — I finally remembered my musings from the previous evening. It looked like I was going to get to find out what would have happened!

At least that was my first thought. On second thought I realized that the ‘me’ controlling this body wasn’t thinking like a 10 year old — I was still thinking like the nearly 48 year old man who had gone to sleep the previous night in 2009. That could be a problem!

“See you tonight!”

My father’s voice jolted me out of my contemplations and caused me to jump. It was just as well that he’d said it in passing, rather than standing there waiting for a reply, as the imprecations that I muttered under my breath while trying to get my heart rate back down would not have gone over well at all! Yep, that was going to be a problem — ten-year-olds aren’t supposed to know those sorts of words. I don’t think that he heard my belated, and civil, acknowledgment. Personally I thought I was doing well to even try to be civil. I didn’t like my father, and hadn’t since he had tried to ruin my mother’s new marriage by dumping two boys on her and a husband who had never wanted kids. It was going to take a lot of restraint to not treat him like the prick I knew him to be.

Dave was still asleep — he’d probably sleep through a tornado — so I quickly looked around for some clothes and got dressed. Once finished, I decided to try to avoid dealing with Dave or my father for as long as possible. Maybe I’d wake up before I made some silly mistake. Or maybe I’d get enough feel for where, and when, I was that I could try to bull my way through it. It didn’t matter how I thought about it, it seemed that avoiding the people who knew me best for as long as possible would be a good idea, so I skipped breakfast and headed out the door where I was greeted by a perfect summer’s day.

It was only when I thought about the fact that it was summer that I realized that I had no reason to assume it would be. If I could be bumped back nearly forty years, what difference would it make if it were plus or minus six months? Contemplating this I shuddered. What would have happened if I’d been dropped into the middle of the school year? I had no idea what classes I’d had when I was however young I was now — I didn’t even know what school I was going to! I remembered getting shuffled between three different schools in the time, just over 16 months, that we’d lived in this trailer but I couldn’t for the life of me remember anything about them. I decided I needed to do some recon work, so I headed down the hill to the rec building.

A quick look at the newspapers for sale out front showed that at least the date was still right, it was just the year that was off. Saturday, June 24th, 1972. Apparently, my father was still working odd shifts and overtime, but I didn’t know if he’d be gone all day. I’d be eleven years old in a couple of months. As an eleven year old I hadn’t paid much attention to current events, so I wouldn’t need to worry much about brushing up on what was going on. If I’d had a dime I still would have picked up a copy of the paper, but I didn’t so I didn’t.

With the knowledge of when I was still fresh in my mind, it was probably time to stop and really think about things. In order to spend some time thinking it would be best if I could avoid running into anyone who knew me. The chances of doing so were slim — with my father at work and my brother, after he dragged himself out of bed, lazing around the house — but stranger things had happened. Like being dumped thirty-seven years into the past. Trolling through my memories of being this age the first time around I realized the answer was right in front of me: the swimming pool! I was pretty sure that I hadn’t visited the pool more than a half dozen times during the three years that I’d lived in the trailer park so it was a good bet that none of my friends would be hanging out there either.

On the other hand, going to the pool meant trudging back up the hill to our trailer and getting my trunks, and possibly risking Dave being awake. Still, I figured it for the best option and headed home. Luck was smiling on me as Dave was still ‘lost to the world.’ It took me some time rooting around in the dresser to find my trunks, but within five minutes I was changed and heading back down the hill. A quick shower in the locker room and I was out on the pool deck looking for a quiet, shady — with my complexion that was a necessity — corner in which to sit and think.

The first thing to think about was whether or not this was a dream. A moment’s thought though, showed that it didn’t much matter. If it wasn’t a dream then I definitely needed to try to fit in as much as I possibly could. If it was a dream, then I lost nothing by trying. Sort of like the argument made by one of those French philosophers — Fermat or Pascal or someone, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Descartes — about believing in religion. Damn but I was going to miss Google! By now I’d have the name of the philosopher and the full quote at hand.

Given that I needed to try to pass myself off as ten years old the next question was how does a ten year old boy act? No idea. Maybe a better question was how did I act when I was ten? Dredging through my faulty memory gave me a few clues.

I was shy and didn’t make friends easily. That was all to the good since there would be fewer people to notice my slip ups. I’d finally overcome some of my shyness not more than six years before — I guess recycled was as good a term as any — when I’d ended up working with one of our more personable salesmen for a while. It wasn’t that he was intending to give me tips on how to be more outgoing, it was just that watching him deal with people was a revelation.

I wasn’t as much of a couch potato as my brother but I wasn’t very active. This would show itself in the paunch that I developed around the time I started puberty. It probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to work on that. I wasn’t about to subject myself to running but I figured I could find something else to do to get some exercise.

I had absolutely no work ethic and terrible study habits. In fact I was almost purely apathetic. I did well in school, carrying straight A’s all of the way to high school, based solely on native intelligence, the ability to listen intently and a willingness to ask questions. I only started doing homework for the first time when I got to college the second time because I was married by then and my wife nagged me. Definitely something to work on this time!

On my first time through, after Dave and I had been dumped on her, my mother would remark that she thought I was an ‘old soul’ — 13 going on 30. That would stand me in good stead this time around.