We frequently go back to the past hoping to find a different future

By David McElroy · March 4, 2018

My name ought to be mounted somewhere on this table, except for the fact that nobody but me would care, of course.

I’m sitting in a booth where I must have sat a thousand times before. It’s in a Whataburger restaurant in the Birmingham suburb of Trussville. Until I moved to a different suburb three years ago, this was my home away from home for many years.

When this place opened, it was the only restaurant near my house that was open 24 hours a day and had WiFi. Since I worked from home at the time and often welcomed the chance to get out, this became my second office. I was here at all hours of the day and night. All the employees knew me by name.

I have no reason to be over here today. I almost never come to this part of town anymore. But today is the second time recently that I’ve felt drawn to drive over here for no apparent reason. But I think I know why I’m here.

My everyday world is entirely different now than it was in those days. I have different restaurants where the employees know me. I’m working in two different offices and spending my time out selling real estate, too. I have no real connection to this world anymore.

But as I sit here in the late afternoon — with the sun starting to get into my eyes as it always has from this angle until it sinks below Chalkville Mountain — I find myself realizing that I’m trying to connect with something from the past. In an instinctive way, I’m looking for something familiar from better days — and I’m hoping that will somehow turn into something better for where I am now.

Consciously, I know how ridiculous this is, but here I am anyway.

I’ve experienced love here. I’ve experienced success of various kinds. I’ve been happy. I’ve made friends here.

I sat right there in the parking lot — just in front of the door, maybe 30 feet from where I am — and had a very important and meaningful phone conversation with someone who loved me. I was sitting at this table when I got the phone call that sealed a $25,000 profit on a political deal when I had rolled the dice and could have lost thousands of dollars instead. I’ve sat here with little children and played games and took pictures as they shrieked in delight that someone was giving them attention.

None of the stories matter to anyone anymore, but they still matter to me. They connect me to a time when I felt happier, when I had more money, when I felt loved, when I felt that I had a future family — when so much was better.

But here’s the thing. I don’t know whether it’s good to indulge this nostalgia or not. It’s an age-old dilemma. Do I need to look to the past for something I’ve lost — or do I need to cut all ties and thoughts of the past in order to find a happier life in the future?

I don’t know. I’m not even sure there’s a right answer. I could make an argument for either.

More and more lately, I find myself having to close the door on things from my past. It’s been a bitter experience and I’m not really good at it. As singer/songwriter Sam Phillips wrote, “I’m not good at things that I don’t want to do.”

I’m not happy to leave the last hopes of family behind. I’m not happy to give up on a love I desperately needed. I’m not happy about the feeling that I’m running out of time to start doing some things that matter to me.

So when I’m drawn here today, am I here to say goodbye to the past? Or am I hoping to find some piece of love or hope or success that I can capture in a bottle and try to grow again?

Unlike a lot of people, I’m willing to completely cut ties to the past if I’m sure it’s the right thing to do and if I’m sure of where I’m going. I know that what matters is my connection to people, not to places or dead memories. I could move away from this place and never look back if I had something better I was going to.

But since I don’t know where I’m going — and I don’t know who I might find love with — I’m stuck in this weird place where I’m looking to the past and hoping to find something better.

There’s a sweet nostalgia to sitting here and remembering what’s happened to me here in the past — but it’s also bitter to consider what I’ve lost and what I don’t yet know how to find.

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There’s nothing socially acceptable that’s as dangerous as drinking alcohol. Most people grow up being told to “drink responsibly” — and all of us see people abusing this drug in one way or another — but the truth is that drinking alcohol is always a terrible risk. The alcohol in these drinks is toxic and the human liver has to work hard to filter the toxins out. What most people don’t realize is that alcohol is classified as a known carcinogen by the World Health Organization — because of the well-established connection between imbibing and various cancers. Many people have taken refuge behind the idea that light or moderate drinking might be safe, but a new study shows that drinking even one drink a day increases the risks of 10 types of cancer. When I was a teen-ager, I looked around and saw the negative effects that this behavior had on a lot of people and decided not to start drinking, so I’ve never even tried this poison. The evidence keeps piling up that I was lucky to have come to that conclusion early.

It hasn’t happened yet, but there’s a possibility that I might be taking in a fourth feline. A couple of months ago, a cat-loving neighbor asked whether I’d seen a “tuxedo cat” hanging out in the neighborhood. I hadn’t, but this guy eventually wandered past my house a few weeks later — and we haven’t been able to find evidence that he has a home. I’ve been giving him water and food for the last week and he finally let me pet him two nights ago. He’s purred for me two nights in a row and he let me take a low-quality selfie with him Thursday night. Tonight, though, he let me pick him up and bring him inside to look around. This went surprisingly well, as you can see from this photo. I don’t know whether he’ll be joining the family, but I’m certain that Alex, Oliver and Sam would vote no, at least until they get to know him. I’m trying to make certain he doesn’t have a home, but if he does join us, what do you suppose his name will be?

It turns out that the radical far left has been training “Antifa cats” to sabotage anything important to Donald Trump. Everything he did was perfect. Honest. It was all the cats’ fault. Arrest all the cats! This is the latest of my ridiculous satirical shorts. Please go watch it. Then “like” it and subscribe. Please. I’m begging you. (Too much?) Although a couple of the previous videos have had views in the hundreds, most have still been seen by fewer than 20 people. So I seem to be having trouble letting people know that page exists.

Here’s the latest of my ridiculous parody shorts. It crossed my mind Tuesday to wonder what a slick and fast-talking car dealer might do right now to try to turn the high price of gasoline to his advantage. So I conceived of a fat and lovable character who tried to sell cars that don’t use any fuel — and then I started wondering if it would be funnier if all the characters were felines. Designing the King Cashpaw character took about four hours, but the rest took only another four hours, so this was a relatively quick piece that virtually wrote itself. I know it’s almost impossible for these parody videos to find a larger audience, but at least they amuse me — and there are 19 of them on my YouTube page now. The first few were very limited, but they’re getting more complex.

The Republican Party is dead. It still exists in name, of course, but it’s nothing but a shell. All that’s left are idiots and stooges and con men of the MAGA party. When Donald Trump is gone — which won’t be long — those populist idiots and pragmatic fools will have no one to follow. Democrats will thrive. They will take more power than ever and they will push the federal government further to the radical far left than ever. When that happens, don’t just blame Trump if you’re a conservative. Blame every person who has claimed to be a conservative and has given up on principles, character and everything else that Republicans once claimed to stand for. As someone who worked as a GOP political consultant for many years, this is disgusting and disturbing to me. Those who have enabled Trump to have almost unchecked power are going to be shocked when they see what they will unleash in the long run. It’s been plain all along what this narcissistic con man is. It’s your fault that you chose to pretend not to see what he really is.

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