Sam Candella enters the Wish Machine to change an embarrassing episode in his life when he was 9 years old.
I shall wait no longer. I have resolved to be the Wish Machine’s first subject. The moment I chose was a summer day in 1935. I was a boy of 9. I was in school. Thurman Butts had punched me in front of the prettiest girl in the third grade. I did not return the blow because I was afraid of Thurman Butts.
The General Grant Grade School was a small country two-story public elementary educational institution a dozen miles outside of Detroit, Michigan. It was a plain red brick building with eight grades. It housed and educated a total of 50 children. Thurman Butts was a hulking 11-year-old, a semi-intelligent illiterate that had remained in the third grade for two years because of his constant failing grades. He had no friends and he stood more than a head taller than any other child. I am sure that his parents, his childhood and his other outside influences made Thurman the boy he was and the criminal he would likely become. At our age we were unaware of such things. All we knew was that Thurman terrorized most of the class, including me.
We lived in a rural community and it was the depression years of the 30s. No one had any money and we brought our apples and sandwiches to school in a paper sack. Most children on warm days ate their sandwiches hurriedly so that they could go out to play on the swings or play baseball in the sand lot behind the school. Sometimes we took our lunch outside to eat on the playground. The huge tomato sandwiches my mother made for my brother and me, were squashed between two slices of fresh homemade bread and they were good. I like tomatoes to this day. Her homemade bread was delicious. By noon the sandwiches were a soggy mess but they still tasted great.
Each morning the school milkman left half-pint glass bottles of drink. When we were fortunate enough to have 3 cents we supplemented our homemade lunches with a pint of white or chocolate milk or orange juice from a student-run “store” in the downstairs hallway. On the few times I had 3 cents for chocolate milk, I felt like a millionaire.
Thurman often took our money, our drinks and portions of our food. We were all afraid of Thurman Butts. I have often wished, even after 70 years, I behaved differently when I allowed Thurman to humiliate me. Given a second chance I would act differently. Furthermore, If I could recapture such a small unimportant moment in my life, it would prove I could go anywhere in my Wish Machine.
Setting the controls on automatic I lay back in the chair, focused my thoughts on a day 65 years ago and pulled the switch. The circuits clicked, the hyperspace shield on the “Egg” opened … and I translated …
Next time, Samson Candella will face that same embarrassing episode in his past a second time.
Gene Paleno is a writer and illustrator living in Witter Springs.
