Charting the Unknown Read Online Free

asked. Paul wore thick glasses and was quick in math, not so good in football.
    â€œThirty two,” he said.
    â€œGood. Anyone else have anything different?”
    A few kids had thirty three, but most, including myself, had thirty two.
    Right there at the front of Room 8 where nothing exciting ever happened, Miss Kahn morphed into an enchantress. She stood up from her desk and walked to the doorway, lifted her small hand to the light switch and flicked off the light. I turned around in my desk to look at the wide eyed girl who sat behind me. We shrugged our shoulders. The air was tingly. This, I thought, was the best kind of math. I glanced at my classmates through the dimness of light let in through thinly curtained windows. For the first time all year the class was completely absorbed.
    â€œNow, I want you to close your eyes and imagine that you are in the year 2000.…think hard…what might life be like so many years into the future? “
    Into my mind came a picture of the space age cartoon The Jetsons. Simultaneously I heard the theme song: “Meet George Jetson…..his boy Elroy….”
    Interrupting the chorus in my head, Miss Kahn continued in a soft voice, “What do you think it will be like in the year 2000? Raise your hand if you have an idea.”
    I raised my hand and said, “We'll travel in flying cars.” Hands shot up across the room. I was peeking. Someone else said, “We'll live on the moon.” “We'll eat instant food.” “Travel by teleporting from one place to another.” “Maybe we'll have our own robots and they'll do all our chores for us!” This got us going. “Maybe there won't be any school!” a boy from the back row shouted out without raising his hand. There were numerous shouts of “hurray!” at this answer.
    Miss Kahn, leery of the boy in the back row, steered the conversation along by saying, “Class, I want you to open your eyes and look at your sheet of paper….The number you have written down on the paper in front of you is how old you will be when we leave this century, the nineteen hundreds, and enter into a new one, the two thousands. I want you to close your eyes again and imagine yourself at thirty two or thirty three. What will your life be like? Who will you be?” This time, there was a lengthier pause.
    In my mind emerged a vision of me in biggie size, the face obscured. I was wearing a long, straight, blue skirt and was busy getting ready to leave the house for an important job like taste testing ice cream flavors for Baskin Robbins. On second thought, I would likely be a double agent and secretly packing heat around my waist. It appeared I was married to a man with dark hair who wore a blue pin stripe suit and a red tie around his neck. He sat at the kitchen table eating Fruit Loops. I was shooing two (or three?) children out the door with bag lunches: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, apples, and Ding Dongs for dessert. I watched the kids board a yellow school bus and then the future me went down the front steps carrying a black leather briefcase, jumped into a car, and sped off in a hurry.
    I was surprised to find that the future me was a stranger. A stranger driving in an unknown car. I didn't recognize her hair or her body or her shoes. I imagined my fourth grade self walking down the sidewalk carrying a load of school books and my grown up version pulling over to the curb next to me.
    Rolling down the car window, she would ask, “You need a ride there, hon?”
    Peering skeptically inside, fourth grade Me would quicken her pace, frown, and say, “I'm not supposed to get in the car with strangers.”
    Future Me would say something like, “Okay then. Your loss,” and drive away. Later I would try to shake the curious feeling that I'd seen her someplace before. All too soon, Miss Kahn turned on the light and the moment was gone. I was left grasping at something