Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go by Karla S. Bryant, a glass of wine

“Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go”

by Karla S. Bryant

 

“Who is H. G. Wells,” I yell out loud at my TV.

The Jeopardy contestant looks hopeful and asks, “Who was Orson Wells?”

I almost choke on my food.

“Sorry,” the host says, “The Time Machine’ was written by H.G. Wells.”

 

I put down my phone, then finish the last bite of my sushi delivered by one of the four Door Dash drivers in town. I look in the fridge for something else to eat. I close the door as soon as I spot the leftover pizza, lean against the fridge, and shut my eyes.

Damn! I know better than this. After the big break-up with Lee Sobieski, I couldn’t eat enough Bassett’s ice cream. Salted caramel pretzel. I loved that ice cream. I loved Lee. I really believed I did. But it hadn’t been a love worth the ten-pound weight gain.

Ben Harmon? I couldn’t even pretend the relationship had been more than an attempt to stave off the nagging feeling that no one cared about me. Like, am I even attractive? Does anybody actually want to be with me? It was exhausting. In the end, truth be told, I didn’t really care about Ben. I no longer found him attractive, and I didn’t really want to be with him. By the time I ended things, it was like pulling off a Band-Aid that had lost its stickiness days ago.

 

I glance at my phone on the counter. Linda had left a voicemail an hour ago. I tap her message.

“Hey, Mimi! You’re going to hate me, but I’m bailing on our Girls Weekend. Jen is having her cake tasting party and I just found out. Ugh! Is this wedding planning never going to end? Let’s reschedule. Sorry for the short notice. Love you!”

I’d been afraid she’d cancel. Fine. She’d probably just talk about the plans for her daughter’s wedding the whole time. I feel like I’d passed the “Always a bridesmaid, never a bride” stage decades ago and was now at the “Always a guest, never a bridesmaid” level.

I pour myself a glass of wine and look out the window at the “skyline” of Mooresville. Only four buildings reach three stories. The rest are one or two stories. There’s the McNeil Trucking Company Headquarters, the Riesman Brothers Window Manufacturing building, the Holiday Inn Express - Mooresville at the PA Turnpike Exchange (it’s actual full name), and the Mooresville High School. I stare down the main street at Mary Beth’s Candle Shoppe, where I’ve worked for three decades.

Even if you’re a close runner-up for a scholarship, if you don’t get it and your parents are scraping to make mortgage payments, college won’t be your path. And once you start working in a small town and dating someone in that small town, you forget about your big city dreams.

I worked for Mary Beth’s Candle Shoppe on weekends and during summers through high school and after graduation, I worked there full time. Mary Beth is pleasant enough, but she’s had enough of it all. She doesn’t want to spend the majority of her days surrounded by Cranberry-Cinnamon, Vanilla Latte, or Northwoods Pine scents. She promoted me to Manager when I turned thirty. The title didn’t mean a lot to me, but what mattered was the raise that went with it. I could afford an apartment of my own. And food. And clothes, within my budget.

I rinse out my wine glass and get ready for bed. Maybe I really live in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, not Mooresville, Pennsylvania. Every day is a repeat of the one before. I wake up each morning and see the oak tree branches brush against my window. I open my closet and grab whatever seems to go together and get ready for another quiet day at Mary Beth’s Candle Shoppe. It’s not like Mooresville has a tourist season. I know almost all of the local customers and they know me.
I stare at my reflection and run my fingers through my hair. At fifty-three, I’ve somehow avoided gray hair so far. Must be in the genes. But the lines around my eyes are unavoidable.

 

I wake up and the first thing I realize is that there is no oak tree pressed against my window, but elm branches sway in a breeze overhead. And I’m not lying down on my bed. I sit on a… bench? I rub my eyes and look straight ahead. Independence Hall. My conscious mind knows Independence Hall is in Philadelphia, a 4-hour drive from Mooresville. It’s a beautiful fall day and I feel like I’m in the middle of a postcard… but why and how am I here? I’m in Philadelphia? The “big city” that my parents never let me visit because it was “too dangerous”? The city I couldn’t talk my Mooresville friends (or boyfriends) into going to for a weekend? How? In movies, there’s a fade in or fade out before a dream starts. Mine happened in a split second with no warning.

          There’s a man, about twenty-five, to my left on the bench. Thick, dark hair. He has small headphones on and stares down at his Sony Walkman. It can’t really be? I lean forward a bit and can see the cassette reels turning. I gasp.

           “Hey, are you okay?”
           Wow. What a smile. This guy is gorgeous. I notice he’s wearing a bright aqua t-shirt and baggy black pants made from… parachute fabric. Is this guy doing some kind of ‘80s cosplay or something?

I smile back and try to sound as normal as I can. “Sorry! I just haven’t seen a real Sony Walkman in a long time.”
           “No? They’ve been out for like five years.”
            I wonder if he’s all there. “Where did you get it… eBay?”
           “Ebay? I don’t know where that is.”
           Before I can respond to his incomprehensible comment, he adds, “I bought it over at Tower Records.”
           “Tower Records?”
           “You’re something else! You’ve never heard of Tower Records?”
           “I’ve always heard about Tower Records! I mean – where I live there was only one record store and when I’d ask for a new release, they’d always say, ‘Who do you think we are? Tower Records?”

He laughs. “Where do you live? Mars?” He shakes his head and sighs. “I’m a jerk. Didn’t even introduce myself or ask your name. Let’s start over.”
He holds out his hand and smiles – that smile again! “I’m Matt. Matt Baros. What’s your name?”
              I shake his hand. “Mimi. Mimi Sadler.”
              Matt tilts his head, “Mimi. I like it. It’s a nice name.”
              “Thanks.”
              “Mimi,” he says my name as if he’s practicing it. “You want to go to Tower Records with me? It’s just over at 100 South Broad. Maybe a twenty-minute walk.”

“Okay!”

A couple walks by, the man carrying a boom box. He wears a black jacket over a white t-shirt, snug black jeans, boots, and sunglasses. The woman wears a fluorescent pink t-shirt with large black lips on it and a denim jacket slung over her shoulders. Her leggings have a black tiger stripe print against bright pink, and she balances herself well on stilettos.  I can’t make out the song that ended, but the opening bars to “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” blast out.

I stare at Matt. How do I ask him what year it is? How do I find out? I have to find out.
            “Hey, is it okay if I use your phone?”
            “Use my phone?” He looks taken aback. “I don’t live nearby.”

“So?”
            He laughs. “So? What do you mean ‘so’? You think I carry my phone with me? How would that work? It’s on the wall in my kitchen.”
My head is spinning.

I smile. I don’t know what the hell is going on, but I’m beginning to love it. I realize that if I can’t figure out what’s going on, I may as well throw my arms up and enjoy the ride.

 

We walk past a large plate glass window of a store on the corner. I stop, frozen on the spot. I stare at my reflection. I’m my twenty-three-year-old self. What the hell? My hair is permed and styled, and my make-up is dramatically on-point. For the first time, I see I’m wearing snug jeans and an over-sized lime green top that hangs off of one shoulder. If I don’t say so myself, I look damn good and now I see why Matt smiles at me the way he does.

He points at the display. “Those VHS camcorders are crazy, huh?”
           “I guess.”
           “Now, any one of us can be a camera man, like it used to be only the people on a movie set or working in tv. If there’s a birthday, an anniversary, something special like that, you can have an actual movie of it.”
            His amazement is endearing.
            “You could even, “ I say carefully, “Make your own movie. You could write your own script, hire actors, and film it yourself.”
             Matt laughed. “Now that’s going too far, Mimi.”
             He shields his eyes to minimize the reflection on the glass. Matt is startled. “I think they’re selling those Casio calculator watches!”
            “The what?” I must have missed this trend.

He points against the glass and puts his arm around my shoulder. We both lean in.
“Right there, right there. See it? Look how small the calculator buttons are under that screen.”
            “What does the screen show?”
            “The time.”
End of story. I hesitate. Well, why not go for it?
              “Imagine if the Casio calculator watch screen could show you messages from people, from friends, in real time? Or if you could watch actual movies on the screen. It could even tell you your heart rate and how fast you’re walking.”
               Matt laughs. “You’re something, you know that? You’ve got an amazing imagination. Or you’ve been thinking about Dick Tracy watches too much!”
               We laugh and keep walking, past the Reading train station on Arch Street and turn at City Hall. I look up at the statue of William Penn on top of the ornate building.
               “Did you know,” Matt says, “It’s an unwritten rule that no one is allowed to construct a building taller than the top of William Penn’s hat?”
               “What if someone does?”
               Matt shakes his head. “It’ll never happen.”
 

We finally near Tower Records, the yellow and red sign overwhelming everything else on the street. I can’t remember the last time my smile was so big. Matt notices it. He takes my hand, and my heart almost skips a beat. We step inside Tower Records and I’m speechless at the sight of so many albums, so much vinyl! Rows and rows and another story upstairs with more rows and rows.

“Where do you even begin?”
           Matt leads the way. “Start with your favorites.”

He stands in front of a row of albums, the middle tab he looks at is labeled “REM”.

“Oh! I like them, too!”
            “Yeah, they’re from Georgia, I think.”
Matt awkwardly tries to hold on to his Walkman, wires, and headphones while sifting through albums.

“Here.” I extend my hand. “I can hold that for you while you look.”
            “Thanks!”
As he looks through more albums, he asks, “You like any local bands? The Hooters? Tommy Conwell and the Young Rumblers?”

I feel like I’d heard of them when I was… well, twenty-three.
           “Yeah, I do.” I stare at the steps to the upper level. “Matt, do you mind if I take a look upstairs?”
            He’s on a mission flipping through another row of albums. “Sure, go ahead. I’ll stay here.”
            I turn and head towards the stairs. I feel dizzy… I am actually surrounded by albums. I’m in Philadelphia in the 1980s and I have no idea how any of this happened, but I’m relishing every moment. I mean, I have to wake up at some point. I just have never had such a vivid dream before.
             As I walk up the steps, I close my eyes for a moment, inhaling the smells of cardboard and plastic and stale cigarette smoke and some kind of weird incense. All at once, I fall. Like a house of cards. My heel caught on a step at an odd angle, and I can’t catch myself. I don’t want to drop Matt’s Walkman and try to grab the railing with one hand. It doesn’t work. Everything around me blurs as I go down.

 

I open my eyes and look over at the branches of an oak tree pressed against my bedroom window. I lie on my side and stare at it. I know it had all been a dream, but the confirmation of it cuts.  In my mind, I start hearing Bryan Adams’ “It Cuts Like a Knife”.

With a sigh, I try to remember if it’s a weekday or the weekend. I stretch my arms and feel something drop out of my hand. It’s a Sony Walkman.

I pick it up and look at it more closely. It’s an actual Sony Walkman. I pop it open and pull out the cassette. “Tommy Conwell and the Young Rumblers: Rumble”. Scrawled across the label is a name: Matt Baros.

I hold my hands to my chest and look around my bedroom. What had happened? How had it happened? A smile spreads across my face. What in the world could I do to make it happen again?
           One thing was sure. Nothing’s going to happen if I stayed in Mooresville. I shower, take extra care doing my hair and make-up, choose a flattering outfit, and drive to Harrisburg, where I know I can catch a train to Philadelphia.

 

And I do. I stare out the window of the Amtrak passenger car and watch trees, utility poles, farms, and towns flash by. I have no expectations. I only know I have to consciously go on this one adventure. This one crazy, impractical, impulsive adventure.

The train finally stops at 8^th and Market. My app says it’s my destination. Small suitcase in hand, I carefully walk down the steps, go up the escalator, and out on Market Street.

It was as bustling as it had been on my recent visit to the ‘80s. The affluent mix with the not-affluent in a steady stream of pedestrians. It’s noon. Most people may be starting their lunch hour. I join in the flow, I pass Macy’s… which I now know had been John Wanamaker’s department store at one time. I look up. William Penn still looks over the City of Brotherly Love. But massive skyscrapers stand in every direction, dwarfing his one-time status. I lift my iPhone to take a photo. I have the perfect shot. Well, maybe if I stand back a couple yards. I begin to walk backwards and, not for the first time in Philadelphia, fall down. I don’t even know what I tripped on. As I scramble to stand back up and grab my suitcase, I feel a hand on my elbow. Someone is helping me up. I turn around.

A handsome man with salt-and-pepper hair smiles at me. And what a smile.
            “Hey, are you okay?”
            My own smile couldn’t have been brighter. “I think so.” I pause. “Matt, right? Aren’t you Matt Baros?”                              
           He nods and grins, “Yeah, that’s right. We’ve met before?”
          “A long time ago.”
         “I think I should remember you. What’s your name?”
         “Mimi. Mimi Sadler.”
         “Mimi. I like it. It’s a nice name.”

And just like that, I have a second chance. A do-over of my life. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get it right. This time I’ll grab the chance to live my actual dream. Or whatever it was.

 

About the author 

 

Karla S. Bryant is a published author and essayist. She is also a produced independent screenwriter. She focuses her work on people in midlife, exploring the richness of their layered histories and how they play a part when their lives take unexpected turns. 

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