Time Warp

Some things have to be
believed to be seen.

– Ralph Hodgson

Time Warp

© D. Erick Emert

Time warps, or the bending, folding, or warping of the time/space continuum as Einstein referred to it, usually occur in science fiction books.  Frankly, I’ve met only one other person other than myself that claims to have experienced one.  And that other person was with me and we experienced it together.  Allow me to explain.

Sixth street in the town where I grew up starts at St. Isidore’s Catholic School on Broad Street, crosses Juniper Street and ends at Park Avenue where the Senior High School sat on the other side of the street.  One block up on Juniper is Seventh Street, which sports an ice-cream shop called Myerl’s.  Now Myerl’s  had two entrances.  One, on Seventh Street – the back door, and one on Juniper Street – the front door.  Halfway down Seventh Street towards Park Avenue sat the three buildings that made up the Junior High School.

In May of 1957 I was in the third grade at St. Isidore’s.  It would be my last year of Catholic School.  My parents were fed up with me being condemned to hell by Mother Superior so the next year I went to a public elementary school.  In his first year at St. Isidore’s was my new friend, Bill.  It was Friday and my parents had given me permission to spend the night at Bill’s house.  So when the bell rang dismissing classes for the day, Bill and I stepped out into the sunshine of a warm May afternoon.

We walked a block up and crossed Broad Street to Seventh.  We felt a day like this should be celebrated with an ice-cream soda.  When we got to Juniper, we crossed the street and went in the front door of Myerl’s.

The place was pretty empty yet, just a few other kids from the Catholic School were there.  The high schools didn’t let out until 3:30 after which the store got really crowded.  We sat down at the bar and ordered a couple of cherry ice-cream sodas.  By the time we finished them, the older kids began streaming in the back door and the place filled up quick.

Willie and I got up to go but we stopped at the door because he wanted to thumb through the comic book rack.  I stood by the door, watching the high school kids.  After a few minutes I noticed a couple of older guys the taller of which was staring at me.  All of a sudden he started rushing toward me through the crowd, pushing people out of his way.

He looked vaguely familiar, but I didn’t think anything of it and Bill was ready to go. He opened the front door and we stepped outside.  The big kid yelled, “Wait!  Wait” but the door closed behind me.  I told Bill to hang on a minute, but when the big kid didn’t follow me out the door I figured he wasn’t yelling at me.  Bill and I started a conversation.  I have no idea what we were talking about – typical nine year old stuff I suppose.  I didn’t mention the big guys rushing at us and neither did he.  By now, they were an afterthought.

Fast forward to May of 1964.  The year before, Bill had started ninth grade in the public Junior High School.  The Catholic School only went up to eighth grade.  Allentown had a Catholic High School but it was thirty miles north of us and very few Catholic parents sent their kids that far to school.  The majority simply came over to the public school system.

One Friday afternoon, Bill and I decided to go to Myerl’s to get an after school sundae.  It was a warm spring day as we walked across Park Avenue then through the softball field that sat beside the Junior High School.  We continued across the macadam school yard then up the ally to Seventh Street.  A half-block later we entered the back door of Myerl’s.

The place was crowded as it usually was this time of day.  We pushed up through the small hall at the back entrance and out into the main store.  I looked around to see who was there and noticed these two young kids at the comic rack by the front door.  I stared at them and got the odd feeling that I somehow knew them.  When the taller of the two stared back at me, I knew.  He was nine year-old me.

I started jostling and shoving through the crowded store yelling, “Wait!  Wait!”  But it didn’t help.  The two kids pushed the front door open and exited the store just before I reached them.  I blew through the front door but the streets outside Meryl’s were empty, nothing more than a few girls walking along Juniper Street.  I ran to the corner of Seventh and Juniper but the two young boys weren’t there either.  They couldn’t have gone anywhere because there was no time.  I was out the door seconds after they left.

You see, I knew who the two third-graders were.  It was me and Bill from 1957.  We had our Catholic School uniforms on.  Unmistakable.  I know what I looked like as a kid.

I turned and glanced back at the front door.  Bill was standing there in the opening looking up and down the street.  “What the hell was that about?” he asked me.

“Nothing,” I answered.  “Let’s go in and get our sundae.”

I had no idea what happened and I never told anyone about it, not even my parents. It was too weird.  But everytime I remembered the incident I felt way-strange.  I joined the Navy after High School and 1n January of 1967 I was home on leave after Boot Camp.  Bill and I drove up Allentown to the Whitehall Mall.  On the way home, I told him the story much like I told it here.  When I finished I looked over at him – his eyes were wide open and he was perspiring.  He said in a very low voice, “I saw the same thing.  I never said a word to anyone about it.  I thought I was nuts or something.”

So there you have it.  What happened those Friday afternoons in May seven years apart?  I have no idea.

Did I ever use this concept in any of the books I’m writing?  In a way.  The travel between Earth and Erde might be called a bending of the space/time continuum.  It’s not a true time warp, more of a worm hole sort of thing.  But it works.