Do-Overs (5 page)

-10-

I’m Invincible

It didn’t take long for me to find a reason to use my wonderful eraser again. Less than twenty-four hours in fact.

Being a junior in college, I knew better, but my only recourse to get out of the dreaded dog-poop-shoe Old Testament class, was to take a different section at eight. That’s A. M.—as in the morning. Ridiculous. And needless to say my body agreed, because at 8:10 a.m. I rolled over to stare my traitorous alarm clock in the dial and realized I was late. I jumped up to head for the shower, but heard it already running. One of my other suitemates must have beaten me to it. What was I to do? I’d already missed the first day of the class because of rescheduling. I was already going to spend the next two weeks lost and confused. But I couldn’t walk in late and unshowered.

Finally my brain woke up. It had worked once, might as well try it again. I dug through my purse and found my beautiful pink eraser at the bottom. I tried to remember exactly what I had done in the cafeteria to make it work. I thought for a moment and said, “Can I do this over?” Nothing happened. I asked again adding please. Maybe good manners were essential. Nothing. I asked again a little more demanding than beseeching. Maybe I needed to show that pink thing who was boss. Nada. It was starting to dawn on me that it must have all been a dream. A very real dream, but a dream nonetheless. I hadn’t actually really changed time. I hadn’t thrown my food on the guy of my dreams and then unthrown it. I had thought at the time I’d soon wake up and it would never have had happened. In some ways it was a major relief. I wasn’t going crazy. The universe did function normally as always. But it had seemed so inexplicably real. Just as real as I felt right then sitting on my bed, late for class, holding an eraser. It had to have been real. For some bizarre reason realizing that my not changing time the day before made me feel more insane than when I actually thought I had.

It had worked. I knew it. Something was keeping it from happening again. Something in the sequence or the words or time zone. Maybe solar flares or the hole in the ozone had to be properly aligned for it to function. I was grasping at straws. Maybe it was a one-use magic eraser? Maybe I had done something to break it? Maybe it only worked when food was involved? Exasperated I shook the stupid thing, shaking it as hard as I could, and said, “Give me a do-over so I’m not late to class!”

This time my clock read 6:55 a.m. and I wanted to kiss it. It had worked! Then it clicked in my mind. Crazy Aunt Charlotte (I guess I needed to quit referring to her as crazy as I was the mental person talking to a desk accessory) had said just wave it around and ask. The waving it must have been vital to making it activate. Strange how relieved I felt. I was doing the impossible, but the realness of it reinforced my sanity. No time to analyze it then. Off to jump in the empty shower and get ready for a good start to a new class.

Sliding into class with five minutes to spare, I found a seat in the back by a very handsome guy. He wasn’t the hunk from the cafeteria by any means, but he wasn’t anything to sneeze at either.

“Good morning,” he said in very cultured tones. In Oklahoma you don’t often get spoken to in very cultured tones. This should be interesting. “I’m Geoffrey Hale.” He reached over to shake my hand. I guess his mother had raised him right.

“Lottie Lambert,” I croaked out.

“Are you new here? I don’t seem to have made your acquaintance. I know practically everyone on campus.”

“I’m a transfer, that’s why I’m taking a freshman level class. Are you a freshman?” I asked.

You’d have thought I had asked if he tortured puppies. I thought for a moment he wasn’t going to dignify my question with an answer when he said, “I’m a senior. I simply didn’t have time in my schedule in years past.” He said schedule all run together and slurry like a British person. It made me feel like asking for some Grey Poupon mustard.

The more we talked the snootier he became. I wondered if the class would ever begin. Then the most awkward thing of all happened.

“My schedule is rather packed, but perchance I might squeeze in some time and we might go out this weekend?” he asked.

Okay, I’m all for live for the day and seize the moment and all that. But in a three-minute conversation, now that was too fast. Yep, let’s try that little eraser trick again.

Once again I was sliding into class with five minutes to spare. The seat was still empty next to Mr. Geoffrey Hale. And it could stay that way. I found myself a spot at the front. Oh how I loved that pink eraser. Life was good.

-11-

Dorm Life - Love It or Don’t

Life had become so much easier with the ability to rewind. I must have used that wonderful, fabulous magic eraser daily for the first week or so. Like the day I forgot to bring my homework to
Señora Aburrida
’s Spanish class. Okay it was really Albert, but she was boring. No homework, no problem. One wave of Super Eraser and I remembered to bring it with me. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a magical Spanish-speaking eraser and I still got a D on the assignment. Maybe I would have been better off trying to talk my professor into letting me turn it in late and getting some help from someone better at Spanish than Olivia.

But, try as I might, the eraser would only ever give one chance to make a change. I learned rule number two one frantic morning a few weeks later from Olivia and her diamond earrings.

It wasn’t my fault. It was a normal frantic morning in our suite. Everyone had put off getting up until the last possible moment and then we were all frantic to get ready on time. Rachel was sitting on the floor by our full-length mirror drying her hair. Stina was bent over the sink brushing her teeth, while Olivia was leaned over her looking into the mirror putting on her third coat of mascara. I was hunting for a clean cami that matched my shirt. Maybe a slightly dirty one would have to do. So digging through my dirty clothesbasket, I heard the shriek of a banshee and the rapid flow of Spanish cuss words. Well honestly, I really didn’t know what the words meant. We hadn’t gotten to the swear words chapter in
Señora Aburrida’s
class yet. The words could have meant peanut butter and jelly, but with the force they were coming out of Olivia’s mouth it didn’t take a Ph.D. in linguistics to hypothesize that they weren’t nice.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” Stina was responding at just a slightly lower decibel. “I didn’t know they were there.”

“Those are DIAMONDS!” Olivia responded as if that made a difference in the situation.

“Well, what were DIAMONDS doing sitting on the side of the sink next to the toilet?”

Time for Rachel the peacemaker to intercede. I don’t think we would have ever lived through the year without blood being drawn if it wasn’t for Rachel’s never failing reason and patience. “It’s okay, guys. Look someone just has to reach in the toilet and get them out. Oh gross, who didn’t flush?” Then again in some situations even Rachel wasn’t the best diplomat in the world.

I rapidly thought back. Oh crap. Well, I didn’t crap, but I had forgotten to flush after I peed. Someone had been pounding on the door for me to hurry. I didn’t wait for the jury to come in on that one. Not to worry. Magic eraser to the rescue.

“Hurry up in there,” Stina pounded on the door.

Business done. I turned and flushed. No diamonds in pee now. Off I went to dig through my dirty laundry for a semi-clean cami. It was only a minute later I heard the Spanish cuss words again. But how could that be? I’d done a do-over. That’s when the realization came to me. I had flushed, but I hadn’t thought to move Olivia’s earrings. Just because I changed one thing, it didn’t change the actions of the others. The earrings were still in the toilet, but thankfully not in a urine-filled toilet. I’d go back a second time and move the earrings. I tried the eraser again, but nothing happened. I tried again and again. I quit trying when Stina and Olivia both looked at me waving my hand through the air like I was one can short of a six pack.

Rules I had figured out. Number one—can’t fix everything by doing it over. Number two—one use only in any situation. Oh and rule number three—I had to get out of the suite quickly before Olivia killed Stina and I had to testify at the murder trial.

Fleeing the room early left me ahead of schedule for class. That was a rarity. It was a beautiful September day. Some trees were just beginning to turn reds and oranges. Those that had leaves left. As is normal in Oklahoma there had been a drought in July and August, so most of the leaves had just turned brown and fallen off.

I cut across the oval to my Spanish class, trying to remember if it was nouns or verbs that were suppose to be conjugated and why. I didn’t see him until I smacked right into his back. Books went everywhere.

“What the. . .?” were the first words Mr. Gorgeous ever said to me. They were beautiful. It was as if he were speaking lines from
Romeo and Juliet
, they fell so eloquently from his lips. “Oh, hey, are you okay? I’m sorry,” he added to his soliloquy. He bent to pick up my books. “I guess I stopped short,” he apologized, even though I knew it was my fault. What a gentleman.

Did I wittily reply, “Oh, no the fault is all mine and here’s my phone number, and insurance verification.” No, I just stood there gaping like a goldfish in a bag of water.

“I guess you knocked her mute,” came a sultry voice from his side. It wasn’t until that moment I became aware that anyone else was near, or even on the same planet. Miss swimsuit model, with silky black hair, six-foot long legs and ginormous boobs (they had to be fake,) was standing leering down her perfect nose (also, probably fake) at me, the mute. This black haired vixen was the epitome of the evil, conniving, manipulative other woman. She was so obvious that it only took six words out of her mouth and five seconds for me to come to that conclusion. “Oh, and you might want to zip your pants,” she added with a stage whisper to be heard all across campus.

Mr. Gorgeous, down on his knees picking up my books, turned to look at me which gave him a straight shot at my unzipped jeans. And needless to say I wasn’t wearing my granny panties that day.

I thrust my hand into my purse and waved my eraser with much more thrust than needed looking like a swashbuckling demented pirate.

So I wouldn’t meet Mr. Darcy Jr. that day. There would be other chances. I just couldn’t have him tell our future grandchildren how the day we met my pants had been unzipped and showing my new pink sparkly thong undies.

-12-

Jane Austen Vs. The Taliban

Overall classes at my new school went fine. My new Old Testament class wasn’t much different than my old Old Testament class. But at least I wasn’t known as dog-poop-shoe-girl there. I had tried to do that over, but again the magic only seemed to work on current happenings—it couldn’t go back more than a few minutes or at most an hour.

Nineteenth Century Lit. was going to be a challenge with Dr. Jamison. Especially if I ever slipped and called her Dr. Jekyll again. Other than the monstrous pile of hard work and the fact that I hacked the teacher off on the very first day, it was the type of class in which I thrived. To be in an upper level literature class, where we could have deep and meaningful conversations over great literary works was like shopping with a $20,000 prepaid Visa card. Bliss. No more listening to inane, half-asleep frat boys make shallow or crude remarks about Madame Bovary’s ovaries or that Mr. Knightly really was gay.

La—ah had decided to be forgiving about my first day’s
faux pas
. Even though we were different in almost every way possible, she was loud, confident and hilarious, while I was awkward, quiet and insecure, we soon found that we were kindred spirits, as our favorite girlfriend Anne (with an E) Shirley would have said. By the third week we were study buddies along with Kasha from the K’s.

Once singled out from the herd of K’s, I was able to see Kasha as an individual. She was darling cute, and when not giggling insanely and finishing her posse’s sentences, she was actually quite intellectual. This I discovered one day while discussing the feminist movement as seen through the works of Austen and Bronte with her in class.

“Dr. Jamison, you keep talking how Jane and Charlotte wrote about the plight of women. Up until I took this class, I always just thought they wrote love stories of the happily ever after kind,” commented La—ah.

“Oo and I so loved that Mr. Darcy,” said Kasha. I think I saw Butch nodding his head in agreement.

“Austen and Bronte did write some page turning romances. And it is said that Austen had all her stories have happy endings because her life didn’t. But let’s delve deeper. If you look beyond the romance, why were our heroines in their dilemmas in the first place? They were either being expected to live off the kindness, or the lack thereof, of extended relatives. Or they were being forced into loveless marriages for financial security. Titles and lands were passed to the male heir. Thus, poor Elizabeth was almost forced to marry Mr. Collins to keep a roof over her family’s head. Or Jane Eyre was sent to relatives, and boarding schools and hired out as a governess. We owe so much to the women who worked to give us equal rights here in our own century,” expounded Dr. Jamison.

“Yet, marriage for necessity is still around,” added Kasha. “And not just to pay back student loans.” Everyone in the class laughed. “Look at the women in Afghanistan who are under the Taliban. They have to wear those cumbersome, stifling
burqas
.”

“I saw on the news that they weren’t allowed to see men doctors so they have one of the highest pregnancy death rates in the world, one out of eight,” added Butch our token guy in the class.

“All because of modesty rules,” said Kasha. “I must have seen the same report. It seems absurd in the 21st century. I know that there were many political reasons we went to war with the Taliban, but I always have been proud that our soldiers were able to make it possible for women to go to school and have some tiny freedoms in their own country.”

“Preach on girlfriend,” added La—ah. We had suddenly changed from a literature class to a tent revival.

“Amen sister,” chimed in Dr. Jamison. That woman could morph personas so fast, like from super intellect to soul sister, at any given moment. Then she also could rapidly turn so wicked it was a wonder a house never fell on her. “How about you Lottie? What can you add to our discussion?”

Up until that moment my brain was just humming with a plethora of profound hypotheses, yet the moment she said my name I did my best imitation of Snooki on
Jeopardy
.

“Well, I um, I um, I always had the hots for Mr. Darcy, but Mr. Knightly was actually a kinder character.” Did I really just say that? For the love of Jane Austen, I had to change something fast. I started digging for my eraser in my purse.

“Excuse me? Are you now looking for a better answer in your purse?” asked Dr. Jekyll.

I found it. Gave a wave and hopefully saved my dignity.

“How about you Lottie? What can you add to our discussion?”

I pondered for a moment with my best highly intellectual look on my face. “It’s hard to imagine that there was a time when women couldn’t inherit property or had to face a life of poverty if they didn’t marry well. But, as my grandma loves to remind me that before the 70s very, very few women in the USA were considered for any job other than secretary, nurse or teacher. And even today women aren’t always paid the same salary as their male colleagues.” Good save, Super Eraser.

“Good point, Lottie. Sadly our time is over for today.” With that she reminded us of our enormous reading assignment and that we needed to begin work on our research papers.

There I was, over a month into the semester, and with the help of my wonderful, fabulous magic eraser, life was finally going great.