My Past Self

The mall was just as I had remembered it.

I entered by the northwest entrance, at the back of the building, where the t-shirt printing shop had been replaced with a drycleaner, and then a print shop. Over the years, I had used all three businesses at one time or another. The businesses were easy to forget, as they were hidden from the main part of the mall.

Merivale Mall, today (photo credit: First Capital Realty)

Walking through a second set of glass doors, I could smell the ammonia and shampoo from the hair salon, Hair World. For decades, this was where I could have my hair cut and styled by Valerie, who knew exactly what I wanted. Looking through the entrance to the salon, I waved at Sandy, who was answering a phone call from behind her reception desk. Though she returned the wave, she was obviously focused on the caller.

Swiss Pastries was the next store, as the rear entrance widened to reveal more businesses: Farm Boy, Baskin Robbins, TD-Canada Trust. The rest of the mall lay ahead of me.

The last time I walked down this mall, I encountered so many people that I had known over the 16-plus years that I had worked at the various stores in this mall on Merivale Road. Without exaggeration, it took three hours to leave the mall, at the far end, from where I had begun. People who worked in the mall and customers, alike, stopped to talk to me and catch up from my absence, from more than two years of living and travelling in East Asia.

DW had been with me that time. She would come and go, running errands at a handful of shops, engaging in conversations as she recognized people she also knew. For a couple of years, she had also worked in the mall, working side-by-side with me at the bank. When we finally left the mall, she compared me with Al Waxman, the star of an old Canadian sitcom, King of Kensington.

"When he walks down the street, he smiles at everyone," she sang the show's theme song.

This visit was different from that previous one, and even remembering that day made me feel disoriented. Something wasn't right. As I looked at the stores, I saw some that didn't seem to jive. There was Sam the Record Man, where I used to buy all of my vinyl. St.Clair Paint and Wallpaper was also there, next door, as was Grand & Toy. But across the hallway was the Shoppers Drug Mart, and seeing it made me realize that the other stores were long gone from the mall. The drug store had also moved further down, toward the Sport Chek.

I looked down to the far end of the mall, and I could see a red sign with a store that hadn't been in the mall in decades: Woolco. The mall was not right. It had returned to the past.

I saw other stores that were long-gone: Warren's House of Britches; Radio Shack; Algonquin Travel.

The camera store was still there, on the left-hand side of the mall. It hadn't been on that side since the mid-1980s, since before it moved into a larger space, on the opposite side of the mall. But there is was, with its original sign and colours, laid out exactly as I remembered it when I first started working there.

Standing by the film-dropoff counter was one of our regular customers, Wilma T. She hadn't aged a day. But what shocked me more was the person who was accepting her latest roll of 35mm film.

It was me.

I recognized the silvery-grey rayon shirt and the knitted, burgundy necktie. My hair was coiffed short on the sides, thick on top, and long in the back. Valerie had done another great job with a style that I carried from the mid-80s to the early 90s. I could see the moles on my cheek and upper lip, evidence that they hadn't yet been removed. The Ross that I saw hadn't been to South Korea, had likely never left North America.

"Take care, Wilma, see you next week," the 80s me said, as she accepted the ticket for her film and turned to leave. With no other customer to attend, the young me looked up to the middle-aged man approaching him. As soon as his eyes met mine, he smiled as though he recognized me but couldn't quite identify me. Was I a customer that he hadn't seen in a while or a forgotten relative?

"How are you, Ross?" I asked, further adding to the confusion that was being drawn across his face. Not only did I know him, but I knew him by name. His eyes were trying to place me but failed. For him, he was not looking into a mirror nor into the future, as I was looking into the past.

"Fine, thanks," the younger me replied, "how can I help you?"

I looked toward the back of the store, where the cameras were on display, on shelves behind glass-covered doors. "I'm interested in a D... um, SLR." I slipped a bit, but the younger me didn't catch it. Digital cameras were just under a decade away but it would be even longer before SLRs entered the digital age. I could see Nikons, Canons, and Minoltas on the shelves. The very SLR that I bought before I started working at the camera store, the Minolta X-700, was next to the newer Maxxum 9000, an auto-focusing SLR. I hadn't seen one since the early 1990s.

The assistant manager, Graeme, was working alongside young Ross, searching for an envelope of processed photos for another customer. "Take a calculator with you," he said. Though his face was expressionless, I knew he was joking, and I understood the joke. In the first week that I had started working in the camera store, I had sold a Minolta X-700 kit, complete with the body, zoom lens, flash, camera bag, UV filter, cleaning accessories, and film. I hand-wrote the invoice and added up the items by doing the math in my head. Only, I had made a mental mistake and charged $100 less than the kit cost.

Graeme had caught the error that evening, as he was reviewing our sales slips. The next day, when I came in for my shift, he showed me the store copy of the invoice, gave me a calculator, and asked me to add up the items. I was horrified at my discovery but Graeme was sympathetic. "Next time," he advised, "use a calculator."

Salesperson Ross slid the glass doors aside and retrieved the new flagship of the Minolta line. Built-in motor drive and a motorized, fast-focusing lens (but not as fast as my modern D-SLR lenses), I remembered how I had fallen in love with this camera when it first came on the market, but that I would never consider buying it because I couldn't afford it at the time, and Minolta had changed its lens mounts, which meant that I would not be able to use my current lenses with it. The camera came with a 50mm lens but I already had a superior, f/1.2 lens for my X-700.

With the bulky camera in my hands, I refamiliarized myself with the buttons. My younger self could see that I was no amateur by how I held the camera and proceeded to look through the viewfinder while my fingers continued to make adjustments with the controls. But even as I focused on the wall with picture frames and photo albums, I could tell that he was looking at me, still trying to determine where he knew me.

"How is L–?" I asked, trying to determine what year I had found myself in. If the camera store was in this location of the mall, rather than across the hall, I was in a period of time before I had started dating DW. With Graeme still my assistant manager, I was in a time when I was a journalism student. But had I met the girlfriend who preceded DW?

"Who?" my past self asked.

"Of course," I said, more to myself than my other self, "we didn't meet L– until after we left The Low Down to Hull and Back News and returned here."

"Do we know each other?"

I lowered the camera from my face and turned my head so that I was face-to-face with the younger me. "Take a good look," I said. "You know me. But not as well as I know you."

He searched my face but when his eyes locked on to mine, they went wide. "How... ?"

"I don't know," I said, lowering my voice and speaking softly, "I just found myself in the mall. I can't remember the last time I was here. Imagine my surprise at seeing you, and here. This store hasn't been in the mall in over a decade, for me. The company itself barely exists."

"How old are you?"

"Fifty-six. I'm you, 33 or 34 years later."

"How are we? Do I get rich?" In my early 20s, I had hopes of becoming a successful, best-selling author. By my late 50s, that dream had all but faded.

"Rich, no, but I've measured my wealth by more than money. We have great friends; some, whom you have already. Others will come. We have a solid roof over our head and are debt-free. We have a life partner who we love dearly. We have kids who have enriched our lives."

"But my dream of becoming rich was a means of being able to see the world," my younger self said. "Tell me I get to see the world."

"You do, starting very soon." In a year or so, the younger me would visit a friend in Glasgow, Scotland, and travel from there to Berlin, Germany. I didn't know if I should tell this young dreamer too much about his future, lest I affect my past.

In fact, if this person from the past owned his Minolta X-700 but hadn't met L–, he was still in the Journalism program at Algonquin College. He had already written about Roland Axam but hadn't fleshed out the character.

"First year of Journalism?" I asked myself.

"Yes," I answered myself. "Second semester."

In the second semester, I had come to a crossroads in my life. My core-course teacher approached me about taking a job as a city reporter at the Edmonton Journal. A friend of my teacher was an editor and reached out, looking to scoop a fresh student to fill the role.

I was honoured that my teacher had thought of me, but I didn't feel that I was ready. I hadn't finished my first year and there was so much that I had yet to learn. But my teacher told me that I was a good writer, and that I would learn everything else while on the job.

I wasn't convinced. But more importantly, I didn't feel that I was ready to pull up roots and move to Alberta, where I knew no one or nothing about western Canadians. My teacher gave me a week to make up my mind but ultimately, I declined the job offer.

To this day, I still wondered what would have happened if I had accepted the job.

"Has Klaus talked to you about a job?" I asked. Klaus Pohle was our teacher.

"Yes," the younger me said. "I'm supposed to give him an answer tomorrow. What do I say?"

If I said nothing, I ran a risk of changing the future. This version of me could still decide to go to Edmonton. Even I came close to saying yes. It would not change the timeline if I told Young Ross the answer that I gave in my 1986.

"I said I wasn't ready. My answer was 'no.'"

"Okay," the younger me said. I could detect disappointment in his voice, just as I felt sad at turning down a new opportunity.

Without another word, I turned and walked away. I felt that there was nothing else to say, that perhaps the reason for my visit to my past self was to ensure that I made the same decision about moving to Edmonton was the correct one. The 'what ifs' that occasionally occupied my head were moot. I was happy with the choices that I had made in life since that time.

I walked further down the mall, turning left at People's Jewelers to head to the central entrance to the mall. To my right was the CIBC, where I would work from 1990 to 1997. To my right, was Rockwell's restaurant.

The sun was shining through the glass doors, almost blinding me. Indeed, white rays of light flooded into the entrance and washed the bank from view. The light grew, engulfing me in a white void. As I tried to orient myself, to find the way to the exit, the unfolding event brought a clarity to my mind.

Everything familiar was being washed out. The past me had made a decision about the job offer. He was going to say 'yes.'

I didn't know where to go or what to do. Memories of my life were fading. The wife and children were now just a concept. My home was gone. My past was just a dream.

Everything was just a dream.