My Kids Got the Sh*tty Timeline

March 2022

On the nights when I have trouble sleeping (which are numerous lately), I often turn on the TV in my bedroom and fall down the YouTube rabbit hole. Some nights it’s comedy (I’m fond of Ryan George and Julie Nolke), some nights, it’s techy stuff (MKBHD, anyone?), but most nights, it’s cosmology. Yes, you read that right, and no, not cosmetology…cosmology. I mean, I do sometimes watch with the sole intent of teaching myself how to “YouTube-me-up” a wig, but on most sleepless nights, I turn on the TV and consume video after video about the universe. Or the multiverse, whichever you believe to be true.

I almost always start with PBS Space Time (Matt O’Dowd, anyone?), and then there’s Neil deGrasse Tyson, Michio Kaku, Kurzgesagt, and many others. By the time I finally start to doze, I am questioning my purpose on (and the reality of?) this insignificant but glorious blue speck with the World Science Festival.

In these videos, Mandela Effects… and time travel…and Schrodinger’s Cat…and the collapse of the wave function are invariably discussed. And I, being quite sleepy but (usually) 100% sober, am always fascinated by the speculation and the possibility of living in a simulation… or, that we’re all just living this one instance of life in this one timeline in this one particular universe.

Then, sober me gets somber.

My kids got the shittiest of the timelines.

I wish I could go back to the “observation point” whenever this shitty wave function collapsed and put us all here, on the left side of the slit experiment. The shitty side of the slit experiment.

I always start to contemplate how we got here; it never fails.

See, my youth was pretty unremarkable. Not awesome, but definitely not awful. Sure, I had my teenage angst, a boy-crazy phase, and the know-it-all period of early adulthood. I also had my really high points, like being the first in my family to graduate from college. I always believed my future was bright. Unlike my kids, I was able to experience my developmental milestones in the comfort of a relatively dull society, with its (not all good) cultures and norms all snugly in place.

My kids, on the other hand… I don’t know how they do it. I don’t know how they cope; I don’t know how they aren’t paralyzed with anxiety or numbed by the habituation of violence and self-centeredness in our society. My son is 15, and my daughter is 5, a high schooler and a kindergartner. They are bombarded with the internet, influence, and disinformation. Narcissism and histrionics abound. Lock-down drills for active shooters happen on the same schedule as the tornado drills. Ice shelves are disintegrating along with several decades of “world peace.” I haven’t even started on what they deal with being Black kids in the rural south or how my son reacted to “The Talk” when we began driving practice a few weeks ago.

Yet here they are, crammed in my bed with me and our cats. They’re bickering like siblings would be doing in the “normal” timeline. My daughter can’t help but pop flips while her brother groans in annoyance as her feet hit his face. He’s annoyed, just as I am as they both destroy my bed. My son hogs up all the blankets–something he’s done since he came out of the womb. We watch “Atlanta” and laugh at the ridiculous Santas in blackface. My daughter sings a silly song she’s just made up about counting. The kitties are getting snuggles. You can feel the security, and the love is tangible. It’s an almost perfect moment. Almost.

My brain ruins everything. I start to think about the unfairness of my kids being brought into this universe…into this shitty timeline. I hope we adults get it together…soon.