Time Travel

When my daughter was between one and two years old, it is accurate to say that she was a young lady with her own agenda. Her words, or lack of them, her facial expressions, her every gesture was one with purpose--hers. She was a mini control freak--until the sippy cup lid.

Sara had a sippy cup the lid of which had a convex bottom. If I sat the lid on the table and hit down sharply on its edge, it would fly up into the air a couple of feet, spinning end over end. This broke the icy composure of the control princess and reduced her to a helpless adorable giggling treasure. We played this game every night for a while. It got to the point that I only had to reach for the cup lid and she would begin to snicker. Thirty two years later this is still one of my life treasures--the memory of my cackling daughter.

Fast forward to the year 2010. At my work vendors will often send us trinkets to get our attention with the hopes that we will remember their name and evaluate their products. Last Monday I got such a toy from an insurance company. It was a half sphere rubber ball with a sort of a golf tee device sticking through the axis. The instructions said to invert the sphere, hold it six to ten inches from a hard surface, and spin it with the tee device, dropping it at the same time. I followed the instructions and the sphere hit the surface and with a loud pop flew all the way to the ceiling. I was immediately transported to 1979 and the sippy cup adventure.

I immediatly grabbed a padded envelope and addressed it to Gwendolyn H. Tyler in New York. I taped the instructions onto the ball and wrote a note telling her to enlist the help of her father with the fun. (He is totally qualified to assist.) Off in the mail.

I started calling on Wednesday to see if it had arrived. The US Mail was unaware of the importance of the package and did not deliver it until Saturday. Gwendolyn, knowing she was expecting a package waited patiently. (see photo right)

Then it happened. Today I got a video on my phone that completed my time travel journey. See and hear what I experienced in 1979 and in 2010. Same giggle, same joy. Thank you Emrys and Sara for the assist.