“These Magic Moments”

Abstract

Spirits portrayed in fiction usually take remarkable form, whether they are the gritty and ephemeral characters of Dickens' A Christmas Carol or the more twisted creatures who offer Faustian bargains in a variety of literary settings. The spirit who recently offered me the possibility of time travel was quite unusual, however, because he was so unremarkable—although his first name, Felix, did leave room for musings. It was Felix, that well-dressed, obnoxiously slim and fit and charming hand surgeon from Florida, who had the idea for the time machine. In that time machine, we visited places thought to have vanished from this earth. We didn't go back to any era as mundane as the Cretaceous period or the French Revolution. Instead, we visited a far more exotic time: the 1960s. Within the thoroughly incongruous confines of New York City's Yale Club we gathered, the sons of Stuyvesant High School, graduates of '64. Not just any group of alums, but a bellwether class that collectively helped America descend into chaos for more than a decade. We were seniors when the bullets in Dallas destroyed innocence, and, like thousands of other graduating classes, we dedicated our yearbook to a fallen president. We had very little insight. We never realized that a better dedication would have been to a generation that would soon be ripped apart by war, self-indulgence, and drugs, a generation that exemplified hypocrisy even as it spoke on behalf of virtues still not achieved in our society. Time travel is not for the faint of heart. Despite all the outward enthusiasm I could muster for this 35th reunion, I feared reliving a time when I majored in doubt and insecurity, a time when …