life’s pause button.

I am at a conference in the cities this weekend, and I brought Robin with me. During a break, he and I had just settled in for some really good snuggles, but we only had about ten minutes before I was due at a meeting. I REALLY wanted to keep on snuggling. 

I thought, not for the first time, how amazing it would be if life had a pause button.

Truly, I have given this a ton of thought. I want a pause button, a rewind button, and a fast-forward button.

I have thought about it so much I actually have rules.

PAUSE

When you hit pause, there is a time limit of just a couple of hours at a time. Time pauses only for you and whoever you link to - I’m not sure how the linking will work, but it’s like teleporting in Harry Potter. You can’t do anything illegal when you pause time, or even slightly nefarious - you can’t even touch other people. It’s designed to do nothing but allow you and your loved ones more innocent joy - sneak in more snuggles with your baby or spend a few more hours at a museum on vacation or make your day at the lake last a little longer. 

REWIND

Rewind could take you a little further. Rewind is meant to fix little stupid shit that nags at you your entire life, or to do something small you wish you had been able to. An example: my mom once put one of her senior pictures on top of my laundry basket when I was a kid - I was ten or so. I thought it was an accident, so I put it back on her dresser. Later on, she sadly said something like “I see you didn’t want that picture of me.” I was MORTIFIED that I had made her feel bad. Typing this out now makes my stomach churn. I told her about this a few years ago, and she has no memory of it, THANK GOD. But I do and would absolutely undo it if I could, even though it was a stupid misunderstanding. So that’s the intent of rewind. It’s for getting a day to talk to my grandpa Harvey - he had a stroke and lost his ability to speak when I was six. It’s for just saying “yes” right away when I was offered the library director job in Luverne instead of “Can I think about it?” (Why did I say that? I knew I was going to take it. I was excited; just scared. What a jerk.) It’s not for going back in time and writing Beatles songs before they could write them, or for going back and making bets on sports when you know the actual outcome from the future (remember how wrong that went in Back to the Future 2?). But maybe it could be for going back in time and killing Hitler before he could become Hitler. Jury’s out.

FAST FORWARD 

Finally, fast-forward. Fast-forward, like pause, is also for the short-term. While I often think about how great my life will be when I am no longer responsible for wiping anyone’s butt but my own, I know I don’t actually want to skip over this part of my life. As much as I get so freaking sick about hearing about washing machines and robot vacuums (looking at you, Phineas), I will also miss the sweet hugs and kisses that come along with that (also looking at you, Phineas). Fast forward is for the real shitty stuff that does nothing at all for anyone - those long hours in the middle of the night when Robin is screaming his head off. When anyone has the stomach flu. Could have used fast forward when I was about to jump out of my skin nervously waiting for labor to start with Robin. 

I must reiterate these remote-like functions can only be used for unequivocal good. They can’t be used for selfish gains (well, fast forwarding through pain and suffering doesn’t seem that selfish), just absolute and unobjectionable good. 

Unlike pause, which effects only you, fast-forward and rewind will have to take the rest of the world along with you. Obviously this is all way above my pay grade; I’m just the ideas guy.

While we’re dreaming, let’s dream big and add in channel-changing as teleportation. How awesome would that be?!

OH! And a closed captioning button for when it’s too noisy and I can’t hear someone, and a volume button (or, let’s be real, a mute button) for my children, and I guess life might just need a whole damn remote control.