Thursday, February 12, 2004 - 12:20 a.m.

I went to see a puppet show.

To call it a puppet show would be doing it an injustice. It was not a puppet show, it was, simply put, a show. It was a show that happened to be played with puppets. It was amazing. The puppets were all created and performed by a man named Ronnie Burkett, a man who (at this point in my life) classifies as one of the greatest live-performers I have ever seen. He performed the majority of the show with his eyes closed, and played every single role. I never thought I would read myself typing this, but the man turned the manipulation of a marionette into an art form.

In short, it was a good puppet show.

Leaving the theatre with a gaggle of friends, we laughed our way to the parking lot. I don’t recall it clearly, but at some point the gaggle came to a stop, and there was nothing but confused silence. I hustled my way to the front of the crowd to see what all the commotion was about. It was late, I had a big day tomorrow, and I needed to get home.

Adam Jack, who had driven five people to the show in his tiny, rusted Honda Civic, stood at the maw of the crowd, his eyes wide with panic. I looked around the parking lot, not yet comprehending the reason behind the group’s halt.

“Adam,” I asked, “where’s your car?”

There was no tiny, rusted Honda Civic in sight.

“I parked right here.” He said.

The car was gone.

And that was the moment that I became unstuck in time.

Unless you’ve personally experienced becoming unstuck in time, you will never quite understand what it feels like. At first it’s like being hit with a bucket of cold water, except that you’re not wet. You check your clothes for moisture. You’re confused. Then you see it; something from your past that you can’t quite explain. You walk toward it.

The closer you get the object the closer you get to your past.

Suddenly, you’re not standing in the parking lot outside the theatre, but you’re sitting on the lip of your high school’s stage, talking to Mike Conley. That’s how everything works when you’re unstuck in time; first you’re here, and now you’re there.

I suddenly found myself at school, six hours earlier. Apparently the first few trips come in baby-steps, and the rest come in erratic leaps. Two days (and six hours) from my current vantage point is the first performance of the Grimsby Secondary School play, Spacetronauts. Ian Malone and Mike Conley, the writers and directors, sit on the lip of the stage with Mr. Soyka (the school’s drama teacher) discussing last-minute changes to the sound cues. They determine that several of the cues are going to change, and that they must be changed for tomorrow so that the show (which is consummating in several months of work) can go on.

I watch the scene play out from the fourth chair in the third row of seats.

The sound cue disc goes into the backpack of Mike Conley.

I follow them out front and watch as Adam Jack’s tiny, rusted Honda Civic picks up Mike Conley and Ian Malone from the school. They drive to Toronto to meet some friends and watch a puppet show performed by a man named Ronnie Burkett.

Mike Conley decides to leave his backpack in Adam’s Honda Civic.

Suddenly I’m back in the crowd, and the crowd stands before the vacant lot, scanning the graveled horizon for a rusted Honda Civic. To no avail. Fear washes over Adam’s panic, and is quickly replaced by desperate and confused anger.

At this point, the pinnacle of fear, I started to laugh uncontrollably, and Mike’s brain crapped itself with worry. Would he ever see his disc again?

Somebody eventually realized that there is a phone-number on a sign on the fence.

Adam whipped out his cell-phone and gave it a call.

Suddenly I’m in my own mind, and there are three Puerto Rican gentlemen standing on the street corner darting their eyes awkwardly up and down. They refuse to accept Adam’s money. They give him a card and tell him to call that number, pay the fee and pretty soon he will have his car back. He pleads with them. They call him “gringo”. It was pretty damn funny, but I wondered whether or not such mish-mashed racial stereotypes where healthy thoughts.

All of a sudden I’m back in the parking lot. The zoetrope-reality is starting to make me feel a little queasy. My stomach lurches.

The very white man on the other end of the line told Adam that his car was being safely detained in a gated lot down some factory-street. Adam let out a curse, hung up the phone and told the posse to start moving out. The lot was a hike away.

Along the walk, I managed to calm Mike down by talking about jazz-era gangsters and potential theme songs for the RCMP. We concluded that the Mounties would improve their public image if they conducted raids while giant speakers cranked out ‘In The Hall Of The Mountain King’.

The group comes to a halt again, and Adam informs us that we’re on the wrong road.

There’s a lurch in my stomach and I’m no longer on the dark streets of Toronto, but in my basement. I’m sitting on a disgusting orange couch. A few feet in front of me, my fourteen-year-old self and Mike (my neighbor of the same age) play a game on Super Nintendo. There’s a brown stain in the cement floor, and board games piled up along wooden shelves. The basement has since been refurbished.

I wonder why I can interact with the Toronto-based reality, but I can only observe the flashbacks? It’s a fascinating paradox, but one that I don’t have time for. I don’t seem to have time for anything these days.

I’m on a street corner.

It’s cold, it’s dark, and it’s most definitely Toronto.

Where is everybody?

They’re behind me.

Standing in a group, laughing the worried laughter of a betrayed assembly, they huddled around the coke-machine-glow of Adam’s cell phone. He was talking to somebody again. This time it wasn’t anybody associated with the towing company, it was Scott Baker, a friend from Grimsby. He has called to see what Adam was doing tonight, and to set up a meeting with him for tomorrow morning. If Adam didn’t find his car, there would be no tomorrow for him.

Mike Conley is still sufficiently worried.

Colors blur and a drop of water hits a beating drum.

Yet again I’m sitting in the audience of a theatre. It’s the Ronnie Burkett theatre, and the set is still on stage, lit with a dim blue light. Thousands upon thousands of marionettes are dancing on stage. Their feet tap with the sharp sound of wood-against-wood and their strings shake and hum with the precision of a million electrodes, but there are no hands on the controls. The puppets are working themselves.

One steps off the stage and suddenly falls limp.

His strings curl into a sinewy pile against his lifeless back with a wooden thump.

This isn’t making any sense.

This wasn’t just time that I’d become unstuck in. It was reality.

I was unstuck in reality.

It says a lot about my life that the first thing to pop into my head at that exact moment was a movie quote. “If the sky were to suddenly open up, there would be no law, there would be no rule. There would only be you and your memories.” I didn’t really bother trying to remember what movie it was from; I had bigger fish to fry.

Someone or something had purposefully removed me from the space/time continuum. The question I found myself asking, especially now, while watching thousands of puppets commit theatrical suicide by stepping out of the light, was why? Why had I been chosen, at this exact moment, to be removed from everything?

Was I supposed to do something?

Was I supposed to fix something?

Was I a mechanic?

Maybe I was supposed to lead Adam back to his car. A poor-man’s Annunciation. Perhaps the universe hinged on Adam’s connection to that Honda Civic. As much as my sense of humor wanted to believe it, my brain told me that couldn’t possibly be the point to all of this.

Was I supposed to reconnect Mike Conley with his sound cue CD?

Was Spacetronauts supposed to be shown?

That seemed awfully self-serving to me, so I avoided it as a possible answer.

Perhaps someone was going to die tonight. Perhaps one of my friends was being erased from the proverbial chalkboard of life. Was I supposed to ensure someone’s survival? Perhaps I was a means to an end, and the end was a better society. I liked the last one, and I desperately wanted to believe it as the truth, but there was no possible way of knowing. There was no knowing anything in this place, whatever it was called.

Another puppet committed suicide.

To my left, four seats down, sat Ronnie Burkett.

“Ronnie Burkett?” I asked.

He didn’t acknowledge my question. He didn’t even move his head.

“Why me? I asked.

“You’re a process.” Ronnie responded.

“For what?”

He smiled without movement.

“You’ll know when it happens.” He whispered.

He wasn’t Ronnie Burkett anymore. He was my Mom. He (or she, rather) was telling me to hurry up. I wasn’t in a theatre either. It was a bookstore. I’d made another jump without even knowing it. Had Ronnie given me an answer? I couldn’t remember. I was too busy focusing on the situation at hand.

A younger version of myself was struggling to pick a book from the shelf.

No need to watch, I remember this.

Do I get the book Mom wants me to get, or the comic book I want?

As I recall, it ended with Mom’s book. A book I still haven’t read; ‘The Tomorrow File’ by Laurence Sanders. This scene didn’t interest me at all, and like Dorothy, I wished to be home. I wished for Grimsby, but I would just as soon take Toronto. I would just as soon be reconnected with the wandering group scouring for Adam’s towed car.

With the sudden click of my own mental ruby-red-slippers, I was walking down a street behind Adam Jack. He suddenly put his hand up to stop everyone. We were at the corner of a four-way intersection. He pointed left, stating that’s the way we ought to be going.

Something in my brain told me to go right.

I told him to go right, because it felt like the proper answer.

Tired, cold, frustrated and defeated, Adam agreed.

A few minutes later we found his car.

The lot was run by a porcelain-white man with a shaved head who kept giving Adam (and his group) contemplative psycho peepers. We had to pool in money to pay for the safe release of Adam’s vehicle, but once it was done, Mike was reunited with his disc, Adam with his car, and the rest of us with our ride home. I hoped everything was set right in the world’s collective conscience, but I hoped a little too soon and I was treated to one last impromptu leap.

This one was not a flashback.

This one was not a twist in reality.

I suspect that this one was a reward, or possibly a warning.

It was a graveyard, and it lasted only a few seconds. I recognized it, but I couldn’t for the life of me tell you where it was. I’d been there before, possibly in my youth, but this was definitely not the past. It was the future.

It made me cry a little.

Become stuck again in time (and reality) feels like a hot summer day. It’s akin to stepping out of a pool, a lake, or an ocean dripping with water and lying on your back, up toward the sun. It’s an invigorating kind of warm that fuels you like a battery and makes your clothes feel dry. It’s reassuring.

I came back into reality in the rear of Adam’s Civic.

We were driving back to Grimsby.

Everyone sat in silence, listening to the radio.

The song was ‘Ordinary World’ by Duran Duran.

Looking back on the puppet show, I can still see the marionettes and I can still remember the music and I can still make out the lights. I remember Ronnie Burkett performing entirely with his eyes closed. He believed in what he was doing so much that he didn’t need the reassurance of sight. I remember considering that one of the bravest things I’d ever seen. Sometimes you get swept up in things that feel so strong you don’t need anybody else to get through.

At the end of the show, as everyone stands clapping, there’s a quote in my head.

“I promise, that one day, everything's going to be better for you.”

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