This is the conversation I have with myself every morning.
The Girl on the Curb
There are many thoughts on that day that appear to be similar. Everyone I talked to seemed to think it was a smaller plane at first, those two-seaters that would commonly lose themselves over Long Island. There was a common disbelief over the scope, brought into sharp focus the moment WPIX stopped broadcasting and we couldn’t hear 1010 WINS anymore and all the phones went dead.
We share these moments of panic.
How we got there, what transpired on the way to school and work, and what happened in the fallout, is what sets us all apart. Because that day started like it wasn’t going to matter too much, at least as far as the history books were concerned: Dad went off to vote (it was primary day in New York, after all) while Mom and I set off on our usual morning routine that would take us uptown to those two boxy structures that housed our daily grinds. I remember leaving that morning with one last glance out my window, over the local park and across the avenue all the way down to One and Two World Trade. It was a sight more spectacular than usual, the mid-September sun hitting the glass at such an angle as to make the whole structure look otherworldly.
This vision had to be a sign. There was a reason everything looked that good at such an awful hour of the morning. Today was going to be an excellent day to get back on the horse, to start a new first act. No longer would I be that perpetual heartbroken lad I’d been since January, when the girl I honestly figured I’d spend the rest of my life with went ahead and broke my heart. I was tired of being the depressed, lovelorn teen, and I was going to go ahead and do something about it. In my usual boneheaded, backwards manner, that didn’t mean a renewed effort to raise my grades to college-acceptable levels, or even a Sisyphean attempt to write the great American novel. Of course it meant going after another girl, one I was only recently admitting I was sweet on and who seemed, at least to a guy like me, to have all the answers.
It iss incredible how quickly the path of a day can change. That same girl held the back of my neck as I began a fit of panicked breathing in the hallway outside of our last morning class. It was ten-thirty, and news had come that the Towers were down. Not just partially destroyed. Completely fallen. That was all we knew. My thoughts drifted to friends and family in Lower Manhattan and, for just a few moments, lost total control of myself. The heaving, irrational noise that sprang from my lungs will never be repeated, the once-in-a-lifetime cough of the flight-or-flight response that came from a place I could never conjure again.
I composed myself by thinking of those who were much closer. My brother on Waverly, my folks near Herald Square, all the cousins and friends who spent their days in the Financial District: there was a mental checklist, and I wouldn’t be at ease until everyone was accounted for. What about Stuyvesant? That venerated school, long-standing social and academic rivals of ours, was right next to the World Trade Center site. What happened to all of them? There was hearsay, rumor, what we could gather from ever-weakening radio signals. The only thing we had that was even close to an eyewitness was a member of student government, a tall, jovial Senior whose every move was punctuated by some new gesture and a wave of his mop of blonde hair. He had been out on the street before everyone was huddled inside and the school was put on lockdown, looking down Park Avenue for any news at all. He returned to us white as a sheet, almost unmoving. Still, quite, deliberate, he uttered three words:
“Don’t go outside.”
I didn’t want to know what he had seen, so I stayed exactly where I was, gathered with my 4th period Plays in Performance class as we tried to make sense of it all. As if there was any way to make sense of any of it. Everything fell away; old high-school allegiances, political viewpoints, plans and hopes and dreams fell by the wayside on that September morning. They were replaced by only two thoughts: “Is everyone okay?” and “How am I going to get out of here?” When the subways shut down there was talk of running; it was too far, I said, and we’re all scattered as it is. Still, a few tried it, and one intrepid, or rather foolhardy, classmate of mine strode from the Upper East Side of Manhattan to his home on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn. I was spared a similar excursion by my father, who had managed to drive uptown and corral the editor of the school newspaper into finding me. My father the Captain had always been a commanding and authoritative figure, but I’m not sure I realized how much until he beat through millions of panicked and confused New Yorkers, across marshaled and often shuttered thoroughfares, to grab me and make sure my mother knew that I was safe. In my whole life, it was the only time I could see clearly what he must have looked like when he was an officer. Desperate times bring the soldiers out of hiding.
On the way home, riding in the only automobile on Park Avenue, we discussed the recent history of international terrorism. He was furious and I was horrified to the point of total numbness, but we spoke of the relationship to the USS Cole, to the methods used to incarcerate the Lockerbie bomber, to the States’ perceived response to this act of war. I remember the vague impressions, my father’s fury and the feeling that my home, while I was sitting in AP Euro with very little idea of the outside world, had turned into a permanent ghost town. We kept speaking. It helped us keep our heads.
My gaze drifted over the Met Life Building as we passed 60th Street. Not too much longer. Ten minutes on a good day to the garage and home, and we’d have to beat that. But that was when I saw it. The falling towers had created a mushroom cloud of dust, tall enough to bloom over the skyscrapers, probably visible to the whole world by now. There it was, big as life, the symbol of absolute destructive terror I inherited from my Cold War-era parents. I kept it in my line of sight for as long as I could, trying desperately to burn it into my memory. A totem, a milestone, a wound upon my mind, whatever you wish to call it. An image that would tell me only one thing: I survived. It is distorted and twisted now in my memory, as if my mind refused to believe the size or shape or horror of that image.
It took something far closer to home to make that day burn and fester in my mind. Feats of nature and acts of technology can be easily dismissed, but the human element will never vanish. I realized this fact as our car was diverted around the Police Academy, another obstacle on our attempt to make it back east. The new recruits, some so young they looked like kids playing dress-up, had been sent into the street to control the chaos, check every vehicle, point everyone away from at-risk areas, and stop anyone who could be planning a follow-up attack. (At that point we just didn’t know; remember the truck, packed full with explosives, which nearly made it onto the George Washington Bridge?) In this bedlam we stopped outside of Posto Pizza, a brick oven joint mere blocks from home. As the NYPD checked every car in front of us, I gained a chance to look around at the first people I’d seen since 94th Street. Second Avenue was filled with them, people rushing about confused and afraid. They were heading towards Friends Seminary to get their children out of school, to Beth Israel to volunteer, to home or something like it.
All save one. There was a girl sitting on the curb. In her twenties, fresh-faced, shorts, handbag, sunglasses, looking like so many before her on a late-summer day. She made no moves towards anywhere in particular. She placed herself on the curb outside the pizzeria, hands on her knees, her expression calm. Her eyes stared out into infinity. Amid the chaos, here was…nothing. She was the image of what my psyche would be for months after: glacial, stone, unable to process. What happened that day was too immense and too horrific for anyone to grasp immediately.
I came home to find that my window now looked out on that same cloud that had been the World Trade Center. I shut my blinds and tried not to think about it. When I could, I reached out to find who was alive and who was still unaccounted for, then tried to find something I could do to help. But the truth was that I was helpless. To this day I don’t know if the correct word was powerless or paralyzed for what I was, but I look at myself and wonder at the lack of heroic gestures. Something should have been done. It appeared, though, that all I could do as my homework, just in case school happened the next day. (It didn’t.) I listened to Paul Simon’s Graceland, thinking it would raise my spirits. (It didn’t.) And as I closed my eyes I realized that all I could see was that girl on the curb. I have probably turned her into something she isn’t after all these years; in a lineup, I would no doubt identify her incorrectly. But in my weakest moments, in those of pain and doubt and horror which strip away all the rest, there she is. I entered that day thinking about one woman, and I’ve spent the rest of my life thinking about another. When my eyes close, hers are open. If she was looking towards, looking through, looking past, in the end it makes little difference. Her eyes betrayed a calm I had never seen before. It was an acceptance of what lay beneath that day once every other thought was stripped from us. All we had were those shared panicked moments. They manifest themselves into one single image, into a totem that will follow us wherever we go. I know exactly what mine is.
It’s the girl on the curb.
I hope I never see her again.
Because I am a compulsive list-maker, I can tell you that this was my favorite song for twelve years. It’s a song for someone totally different than my usual stance: cocksure with a healthy swagger, always working on something, totally sure that success would be mine just as soon as I put pen to paper.
You could say it was a tune to bring out an alter-ego who could get stuff done.
We make soundtracks for ourselves, playing our daily routines to a melody and a beat. The songs become inexorably tied to certain events, never divesting themselves from that memory. Genesis’ “Abacab” still pulls a sunny Los Angeles morning into my mind, the seven-minutes-flat of the track used to measure the distance from my apartment door to the lecture hall where I’d spend the next five hours. Dire Straits’ “Brothers in Arms” finds me back home, wandering the streets of Manhattan attempting to make sense of the years where it became more symbol than city. INXS’ “Not Enough Time,” The Police’s “King of Pain,” even Marvin Berry and the Starlighters’ version of “Earth Angel” can instantaneously bring throw me back to places and people and moments that I thought were gone forever.
These songs change the tone of each of our days. We choose what we need to hear, and we make it through on that wave. It sometimes dictates our emotions, keeping us in a renewing cycle of sadness and frustration. I know that I spent much too long listening to only the depressing tunes on Emergency and I when I should have been paying attention to parts of my world that were about to be utterly destroyed. That was my failure as a sixteen-year-old; I removed myself from my life with the soundtrack.
And now I feel like I’m getting a new favorite tune. I didn’t even need to check the list to remember that I’ve only had four songs ever that I’ve declared my favorite. Whatever’s next will make a hot five, a number I’ve always thought made for good list material. I want something to be worthy of that alter-ego. Bring him out a bit to help with the endless to-do list of being an adult. He doesn’t have to be here all the time, mind you. Just long enough to govern the soundtrack, to remind me that there are only so many hours in each day and there’s no use in crafting a sonic landscape that fights against what you’re trying to do. (“Listening to Kid A makes you sad. It has always made you sad. So cut it out.” I can hear him already laying out the ground rules. Not too shabby, dude.)
I’ll spin this record one more time, maybe talk a bit about how I think George is the greatest of all The Beatles. And then I’ll put it back on the shelf, ready to play it whenever I need to feel everything it pulls out of me again.
Your Friend in Time.
No matter what, your life is going to change. The places where you spent your childhood will disappear. Tragedy will strike when least expected. The people you love the most will die, drift away, or leave. Your professional career will hit multiple snags; chances are you’ll be fired or the company you work for will shutter or you will move on to greener pastures at least once. Moment to moment your future is filled with an infinite number of possibilities, and no matter how much you prepare the world will dole out surprises, both excellent and terrible. You’re going to have to roll with the punches, because even your grand plans for tomorrow are not assured.
But your past is immutable. Back there the world is forever fixed, your good days marking a life well-lived, your bad days becoming learning experiences. There are momentous decisions that forever altered your path. There are people you loved with your whole heart, and who gave you the happiest times of your life. If you look far enough back, if you really think about it, you’ll find the people, places, and things in your life who made you who you are.
The Back to the Future movies offer a comforting alternative. What if you had a time machine that allowed you to shape the past into something better? Your parents hipper, your car cooler, the coming years filled with flying cars and computer-controlled excellent weather; there is nothing you could not make into reality with a quick trip to 1955. It would all be cosmetic. If you had a Delorean at your ready disposal, you couldn’t change what shaped you. Your world will turn, leaving you looking for something familiar in strange surroundings. Your hometown can turn from a slum into a city of promise and back again. Old enemies can suddenly be trusted, old friends and loved ones can disappear unexpectedly. Through it all, you are always you. What you’ve experienced, and the lessons you’ve learned, will stay with you forever.
Marty McFly can change the past all he wants, but he stays consistent. In fact, he only acts as an agent of change for those around him. His continual meddling with space-time turns his timid flunky father into a confident success, and then into a dead man, and finally back into that success. His mother is married off to a villain, his best friend is shipped to a mental hospital, his town reduced to a disaster area. Even when he fixes his mistakes, creating a better future for all around him, he doesn’t change immediately. He’s the same Marty, uneasy in his current life yet wary of rejection. If he put his mind to it, he could accomplish anything, but at times he seems unable, or at best unwilling. This is true no matter which 1985 we encounter. Note that even with the improved McFly residence of the first Back to the Future, not a single piece of Marty’s room has changed. His decisions are static, even down to the container of off-brand candies he keeps by his bed. No amount of travel in the Delorean will make him a better man. He has to learn first.
When Marty consciously avoids the road race that would permanently injure him at the end of Part III, we’re seeing the final evolution of his character. This revelation would not happen solely through chronological manipulation. Marty can’t be born in good fortune like his brother and sister. Dave and Linda are products of the time stream, their pasts reflecting a world where the McFly scion is a famous writer, and a confident and noble man to boot. Marty, misfit youngest child, friend to eccentric inventor Emmet Lathrop Brown, reticent rock star, had to take an entirely different route. His past doesn’t change with the new reality; as the time-traveling agent he remembers the McFly home with the alcoholic mother and pushover dad. He couldn’t stand up to Biff Tannen, his plan to get the McFlys together at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance falling victim to the bully’s drunken rage. If it wasn’t for the strength and tenacity of his father, the newly-empowered George McFly of 1955, Marty would have faded from reality altogether. At the end of the first Back to the Future it’s those without the trauma of the past who excel and save the day. Back to the Future is George McFly’s story, demonstrating how the opportunity to be a hero, even if only given once, can change a person’s whole life for the better.
The youngest McFly does not actually learn anything in the first film. Actually, he is a weaker character in the sequel, more prone to lashing out or acting on a wrong impulse. The second film is Marty’s story, and it’s a narrative fueled by terror and uncertainty. His last adventure ended in an improved world for the McFlys, but Marty can’t live in that future yet. His past includes memories of his best friend shot dead, of the overbearing bully who ruins his family’s life over three decades, of his do-nothing parents and his listless siblings. While his future looks bright, there is nothing to tell Marty that it will be anything less than fleeting. That’s why the repeated calls of “chicken” bother him so much. There has yet to be a redemptive moment for him, and there is an urge to show that he is every bit the man his new father is. Marty is scared of turning into the old George. His past tells him that it’s far more likely to be a waste, a coward, or a slacker than it is to be a success. His family and his friends are unburdened by similar memories, driven to excel through most of their lives. What Marty sees is an immediate change, and he wants it too. The Sports Almanac which drives the plot of the second half of Part II is McFly’s attempt to jump-start his own excellent future; after all, wealth can open doors which remain shut to most others. This quick-fix self-reliance backfires, and soon that wealth is in the hands of a jumpsuit-clad tyrant, a man who systematically ruins everything Marty loves. It is only when he is penitent for his mistakes, when he acknowledges what has gone wrong in his past rather than trying to jury-rig his future, that Marty is finally able to move forward and begin to forge permanently a good life for himself and those around him.
The main result of this change is the lack of violence in his character. Much of the actions taken by Marty in the first two films involve actively punching someone or steering them into a barrier that will cause them harm. He punches Biff, trips him, sends his car flying into a manure truck (twice). A similar fate befalls Griff in the now-famous hoverboard chase. When it comes time to face Mad Dog, Marty realizes that it would do no good to draw a gun. The third member of the Tannen family he faces leaves Marty with a choice: stand tall or die. The actions of the first three movies culminate in a vision of Marty’s own demise, a snapshot of his own tombstone seven decades later, forgotten by the world. That’s all he would get for the ultimate act of violence against a villain. Marty has been quick to take the first move, ready to lash out at anyone he feels is threatening his world. Death eludes him several times, but it will come for Marty McFly sooner rather than later if he doesn’t learn from his past. It’s true that his father changed his whole life with one punch, but that motion was in defense, in protecting the woman who would become the love of his life. George’s reaction was a matter of honor and a shift in his character, whereas his son’s default notion of violence is a nod towards cowardice. Marty knows no other way to react until he learns from his own past. That’s what is remarkable about his decision to avoid racing Needles when he returns to 1985. Marty’s past, blindly followed, leads him careening into another car at an intersection, busting his hand and making sure he stays in that horrible job in 2015. If he doesn’t learn, then his future is predetermined. Since he grows, then he can make his future a good one.
Jennifer Parker, Marty’s shape-shifting girlfriend, greets our protagonist as bookends on the series. Think of their encounters at the end of the first and third movies. Claudia Wells’ Jennifer meets McFly as he preens over his new truck; his attention is focused on his new-found good fortune. When Marty rushes to Elizabeth Shue’s Jennifer at the end of Part III, his focus is completely on her. His attire has changed as well, slipping from the iconic Shah Safari threads of 1985 to a classic Clint Eastwood cowboy getup. He’s no longer self-centered, the worry and doubt drained from him. Marty takes three movies to arrive at a destination where he’s a man rather than a boy, ready to admit his past mistakes and stop looking for the easy way out. There’s no more time machine, no more messing about in the past to grab the future with no pain or suffering. It’s not about material possessions or the yearning to prove oneself. Now it’s about those around him.
What’s the one souvenir McFly takes from his journey across one hundred and thirty years? A photograph of him and Doc Brown. That’s the only outward mark of the epic adventure. As far as the world is concerned, George McFly has always been the author of A Match Made in Space, and Biff Tannen has always been the erstwhile bully who channeled his rage into auto detailing. Anything past that point, up to and including the proof Jennifer once held of Marty’s future career sabotage, is now up for grabs. When Doc Brown declares gleefully that no one’s future is set, he never mentions the past. He doesn’t have to; without the machine that can trick someone into thinking their previous personal timeline is mutable, then all one can do is look into their own memories to inform a better future for themselves. Marty will make the right decisions because he’s already had time to make the wrong ones.
As we stare into the picture of the time travelers, we’re informed of the most important thing Marty has learned: we’re never guaranteed that next time with the people we love. The journey began for him as he saw Doc murdered in the parking lot of Twin Pines Mall. He lived it over again in the lot of Lone Pine Mall. He’s stood over the graves of his best friend and his father, and he’s had a near-death experience three times over. No one is going to be there every time you need them. Sometimes you’ll have to make it on your own.
Friends, family, partners, lovers, every person who has touched your life, who has shaped your past to the point where you are confident and strong and ready: these are the people you are going to miss when they’re gone. They are the reason you no longer rush into confrontations when you’re called Chicken. They taught you how to get it right the first time, and how to learn from your mistakes when you mess it up anyway. They are your friends in time. There’s no device for you to go back and see them again, to say one more time that you love them. But they’ll be with you always. Even if you can’t talk to them, the lessons they instilled will travel with you into your uncertain future.
“It means your future hasn’t been written yet! No one’s has! Your future is whatever you make it. So make it a good one. Both of you.”
Every one of you has your own Doc Brown, your own personal George McFly, Lorraine Baines, Biff Tannen, Jennifer Parker. They might still be with you. They might be long gone from your life. They are still your past. And they’d want you to know that your future isn’t written. Make it a good one.
