Jonathan sighed and wrinkled his nose. I loathe oatmeal, he thought. He was perched at the breakfast table on the day after Labor Day, trying to understand why his feet weren't even reaching the ground, and the offer of oatmeal took him by surprise. Maybe this time around, I can eliminate oatmeal altogether, he thought. Along with cod liver oil, One-A-Day vitamins, and all the other health-food quack ideas Mom forced on me in her good-natured way.

He realized that he was less likely to have any luck with "AJ". No more Jonathan, he thought, I'll be stuck with the nick-name until I leave for college. A. Jonathan Halifax, that's me.

Norma Halifax stood at the stove in her bathrobe, one hand on her hip, a frown on her face, waiting for an answer. "AJ? Honey? Are you all right? Did you hear me?"

"Corn flakes, Mom," AJ muttered. He watched as she placed a tiny bowl of cereal on the table. She turned away before pouring milk into the bowl; AJ shrugged and reached for the bottle.

"Careful there, sport," a voice murmured quietly from behind a newspaper, across the breakfast table. "You'll drop that bottle. Let your Mom pour the milk."

Sport. AJ remembered, with a smile, that his father always called him "sport" or "kiddo." At least it's better than AJ, he thought, as he proceeded to lift the bottle. His father's warning reminded him of the same admonition he had given Danny in BeforeTime — which he, too, had cheerfully ignored.

As he lifted the bottle, a dusty memory flitted througyh his mind that vintage-1950 milk bottles were made from glass rather than cardboard adorned with mug shots of missing children. And it occurred to him that the muscles in his arm were now the muscles of a six-year old, not an adult. But it was too late: the bottle slithered through his fingers, bounced off the edge of the breakfast table, and shattered on the kitchen floor with a spectacular crash!, spraying shards of glass and rivulets of white liquid across the floor and several inches up the far wall.

There was a moment's stunned silence, and then Lucas Halifax slammed the paper down on the table and bellowed, "Jesus H. Christ! Didn't I just tell you to let your mother pour the milk? What kind of imbecile are you, anyway? Shit!" His face turned bright red, the veins standing out in his neck. He had jet-black hair, thick menacing eyebrows, and a killer's eyes; AJ suddenly remembered why he had been terrified of him as a child. But he had spent his adult life in BeforeTime responding to blunders with a joke, so instinct took over as he declared to the room at large, "Oh, well: easy come, easy go."

Norma, who had frozen at the sound of the crash, intervened. "Lucas," she said, as he reached a brawny arm across the table to swat AJ like a mosquito, "don't! The boy's still confused. He didn't mean it — it was a mistake. I'll clean it up."

Turning to AJ, she said, "Why don't you go get dressed now? We have to take you down to your new school to get you registered." She picked him up from behind, under the armpits, carried him to the door leading into the living room, set him down on his feet, and pushed him off with a small pat on the rump.

It happened quickly, and AJ was unprepared. He could barely resist shouting, I'm a man, you can't pick me up! Meanwhile, Lucas was still bellowing, "Clumsy oaf! Goddamn orangutan!" He was dark, brooding, and handsome, with a full nose, thin lips, and a strong chin; AJ could see why women found him handsome.  AJ didn't look anything like him; he remembered, in BeforeTime, that Norma had compared Lucas to James Mason, the actor [1]. Not like me, he thought. I'm blond, and short for my age. I still remember my childhood pictures; that much I know.

Off he went in search of unfamiliar clothes in an unfamiliar bedroom, overwhelmed by the situation in which he found himself. He brushed his teeth and found that he could barely reach the bathroom sink; he peed into the toilet, and cursed softly as he found that he had to aim at a whole new angle. He had already discovered that he couldn't kick, throw, punch, push, or lift things as he had been accustomed to for so many adult years. And as he reached for his clothes, he realized that he felt incredibly clumsy in everything he did; his body felt tense, filled with random bursts of energy that sent his arms and legs off in directions unintended. In moments like these, he thought, I would fall over a piece of string if you put it in front of me.

Other physical changes were innocuous, but still took some adjustment. No more whiskers, for example, no more shaving. That's fine, he thought — but he found himself absent-mindedly scratching at imaginary whiskers. Nobody seemed to think it looked strange, but he caught himself at it a few times and felt like a jerk. And he was no longer wearing glasses; he had no idea what had happened to them when the lightning struck, but they were gone and no longer needed. His near-sighted world of fuzzy forms was gone, replaced by a new world where everything was crisp and sharp, from the end of his nose all the way to the far horizons. This was a mixed blessing: he no longer had glasses to protect his eyes from dust, dirt and flying objects. It brought back memories of the BeforeTime incident when a gunpowder-like concoction he was brewing in the high school chemistry lab exploded in his face; he had second degree burns all over his face, but his glasses protected him from certain blindness.

So, he thought gloomily, what the hell do I do? Should I simply sit down with Mom and Dad and say: look, there has been the most amazing accident. I was grown up, older than you are now; and somehow, here I am, back in 1950. But I'd like you to treat me as an adult, please. He could already feel the chuckles, the pat on the back, the condescending words. Even worse, he realized, if he became strident about things that he knew from BeforeTime — places he had been, events that he could now foretell — he could be sent off to the funny farm. Maybe the best thing to do, he thought, as he sat on the army cot that served as his bed, pulling on tiny socks and looking for shrimp-sized shoes under the bed, is to keep my mouth shut, and act like a normal six year old kid.

What a pain in the ass, he thought. He had to remind himself that he was now equipped with adult mental skills which could be practiced from the vantage point of an innocent-looking child. And he knew that he could foretell events ... at least some events, those that he remembered from BeforeTime. But he couldn't remember the vast majority of tiny details from his past. Did I eat Corn Flakes or Wheaties for breakfast when I was six? he wondered. Did I like peanut-butter sandwiches or cheese sandwiches for lunch? He knew that his preferences had changed dramatically a few times during his early childhood, but he had not the foggiest idea of what or when. To try to reconstruct, remember, and then repeat all these minute details would be madness. Worse, he thought, it would lead to paralysis: I would never know if he was doing the "right" thing.

Who cares? he thought. For day to day trivia, I'll just do what feels normal. But what about major events? Thinking back on his former life, he couldn't remember anything significant about the year 1950. Who was even President then? Ah, yes, he reminded himself: it was Harry Truman, having won a dramatic upset victory two years before, against Dewey. Which Dewey? he thought. Thomas? Fred? George? He couldn't remember. And would Eisenhower be President next? What if he was? If he announced this dramatic event now, two years in advance, would anyone care? Would anyone believe him? And what would be gained?

He was still debating with himself, lecturing an unfamiliar image in the mirror, when Norma pushed aside the curtain that separated his bedroom from the living room. He could see that his bedroom was intended to be a dining alcove; the makeshift curtain had been hung from a pole that was beyond his reach. His room, and the living room beyond, were littered with cardboard boxes; they had just moved into the apartment two days earlier, and Norma had brought him here straight from the Southampton hospital on Labor Day. That much he remembered from the blurry events of the weekend, but not much more.

"AJ, are you all right?" she asked. She knelt down, put two hands on his shoulders, as AJ remembered doing with his own children, and looked into his eyes. "How do you feel? You seem to have gotten yourself dressed okay. Ready to face a new school?"

He resisted the urge to pull back, and thought to himself, Good grief! Is this what Ann and I looked like to our kids when we stuck our shnozzola an inch in front of their face?

But he knew that she meant well, so he smiled and shrugged as Norma took his hand to lead him out of the room. He noticed that she was wearing a cheap cotton dress, and he smiled at a vagrant Beforetime memory of watching her bent over a sewing machine, laboriously fashioning patterns from a Sears and Roebuck design. He wondered briefly whether women these days ever wore jeans and a t-shirt.

As they walked from the bedroom into the hallway, AJ heard the sound of the front door slamming; Lucas was evidently stomping off to work. From his BeforeTime memories, AJ recalled that he worked at a defense electronics firm in Great Neck; already he found himself grateful for the freedom of his father's absence until his return this evening.

A few minutes later, Norma and AJ left, too — out the door, down the stairs, and into the street beyond the apartment. From BeforeTime, AJ had memories of the area as bleak and gray and uninhabited, like the drab concrete housing he had once seen in Warsaw in the 1970s. But in NowTime, he saw that it wasn't so bad; the apartment complex, which consisted of five buildings around a central grassy park, was perfectly reasonable, even if it was nondescript. The buildings were twelve stories high, constructed of red brick, with the usual bustle of people coming and going on this first morning after the Labor Day weekend. It was warm — normal weather for early September — and the sun was beating down from a blue, cloudless day. Unlike his BeforeTime memories, suburban New York in the 1950s was not entirely barren after all. Why do I have such gloomy memories of this period? he wondered.

So far, he hadn't seen any other people besides his mother and father in this new world; now there were dozens, walking up and down the street on their way to work or shopping. The blue collar workers — plumbers, carpenters, electricians, and factory workers — were dressed in the same nondescript work shirts and jeans that he would have expected in the 1980s. The women's fashions looked odd to him, and the men in suits were caricatures of the 1950s — he smiled at the thought.

Norma chattered away as she led him down the street in search of a bus, comparing this suburban village outside Manhattan with their last home in Denver. Denver: The word brought back a flood of BeforeTime memories, and it suddenly struck AJ that she would assume he was familiar with recent events — even though to him, in NowTime, the events were 35 years old. As they climbed aboard the bus at the corner, his mind turned back to Colorado.

They had lived in Denver from 1947 to 1950, while Lucas attended college on a G.I. grant after the war. AJ had almost no memories before 1947: he knew only that he had been born on an Air Force base in 1944, and that after the war ended, he lived in his grandmother's house in Washington, DC.

But he did have memories of Denver. He still remembered, for example, the afternoon that Lucas appeared in his bedroom and found him perched on the top of his two-tiered bunk-bed. "Jump down, sport!" he said, with outstretched arms and a smile on his face. "I'll catch you." It seemed like a reasonable idea, so jump he did. As he sailed through the air, Lucas withdrew his arms and stepped aside. AJ fell flat on his face with a splat! that left him more surprised and angry than hurt. "That's just a lesson," Lucas chuckled as he walked out of the room, leaving him on the floor, "that you should never trust anyone." Amen to that, AJ swore to himself, as he remembered the incident; it was a lesson tattooed on his soul.

He also remembered that life in Denver had ended suddenly: Lucas graduated from Denver University and immediately left town to find a job. AJ remembered perching himself on the top of a playground jungle gym, waving at Lucas's car as he drove away on the morning after graduation — off in search of a job back East. It was a moment of exquisite joy: a bright, sunny day, with a light, cool breeze blowing down from the Rocky Mountains, balancing himself on the top beam of the jungle gym with no hands, waving good-bye to his nemesis as he disappeared from view at the end of the road. He had been told that he would now have the entire summer to play, and he had thought, at the time, that it meant that Lucas would be away that long.

But to his surprise, Norma suddenly announced two weeks later that they would travel to New York, too. Overnight, it seemed, they packed everything; and even now, it struck him as odd that they had indulged in the unfamiliar luxury of flying to New York. Apparently Lucas hadn't grasped the immediacy of air travel either, for he had no home for them when they arrived; only through the enormous good fortune of finding someone in his new job with an unoccupied summer house in the Long Island countryside were they able to have a house at all until Lucas found an affordable apartment. Long Island countryside, AJ thought as the Glen Oaks bus slowed to a stop. Countryside ... Water Mill in the Hamptons. That must be how we ended up in the house that I revisited in 1985.

As he climbed down from the bus, jumping with both feet off the bottom step, Norma remarked on the difference between New York schools and Denver schools. Since he was transferring in from another city, she told him, there were papers to be filled out. What a nuisance, AJ thought grumpily. School doesn't even start until tomorrow, but we have to show up to register this morning.

The school was a block away from the bus-stop, and AJ could see it ahead of him as they strolled past delicatessens, newspaper stands, hardware stores, and dry cleaning shops along the street. Suddenly, Norma, who had been glancing at something across the street, gasped and began to prod him along faster. It was annoying, for he was still getting used to his stubby legs. "Mom, slow down! What's the hurry?"

"Come on, AJ," she whispered softly, "we'll be late."

Late for what? he thought. But it was pointless to argue; they had reached the school and they entered the front door with a dozen other people. AJ saw Norma turn as they went through the door, peering back down the street, but then they were inside, their footsteps echoing along a quiet hallway, lined with the ubiquitous gray metal lockers that every American school child comes to know as his private storehouse away from home. There were no other children in evidence, and only an occasional adult striding briskly down the hall and disappearing into classrooms.

All in all, AJ thought, it's not a bad place: no evidence of violence gouged into the walls, no signs of paint peeling from the ceiling, no smell of urine in the hallway — nothing like the New York City public schools of BeforeTime. But it smelled old and musty; AJ had the sense that time had stopped somewhere in the early 1920s.

At the end of the corridor, they found the administration offices. Another mother was waiting inside with a boy the same size as AJ. He was holding a small toy airplane, and he eyed AJ suspiciously, as if fearing he might make a grab for it. It was AJ's first encounter with another child; he had no idea what to say. It's like two dogs checking each other out, he thought. Lots of circling and sniffing. Finally, the other child held the toy out to AJ and announced, "You want this? Well, it's mine!"

Before AJ could respond, they were ushered into an office by an administrator in charge of registrations. "And what is your name, young man?" the woman asked, even though AJ could see she had already written his name on her registration form.

It's as if I were a pet dog, AJ thought, wondering if other children had the same impression of adult conversations. They raise their voice an octave; if their voice is unpleasant in its normal range, it's doubly so in soprano. But the registration woman was someone AJ would only deal with once, so he focused in on her once again. "Halifax," he told her in a voice still too squeaky. "Jonathan Halifax."

"Halifax," she mused as she wrote a check mark next to his name. Pushing aside a stray hank of hair and pinching absently at a wattle of double chin, she squinted at Norma and remarked, with words that AJ had heard thousands of times in his BeforeTime life. "Unusual name, that. Where does it come from?"

Canada, you brainless twit! AJ thought grumpily. Lucas's family had emigrated from Europe in the 1840s, landing in Halifax, Nova Scotia. From there, they moved to Toronto, where the parents succumbed to an outbreak of smallpox, leaving orphan twins to fend for themselves. One eventually gravitated to New York City, where he ended up in an orphanage; the other — Lucas's great-grandfather — ended up in Salt Lake City, of all places, finding employment on the transcontinental railroad project that was linking up in Utah.

The apocryphal story, handed down through the generations, and still vivid in AJ's BeforeTime memories, was that Great-Great-Grandpa was wandering in a drunken stupor down the middle of Main Street one bright morning in Salt Lake, when he was trampled by a stage coach hell-bent for leather. The people who rushed to his aid asked his name, but in his alcoholic blur, he thought they were asking where he came from. "Halifax," he bellowed, and promptly expired. His wife, who hardly mourned her loss, came to be known as Widow Halifax; in the rough and tumble days of the Old West, the name stuck and eventually became the legal surname of the next generation of children, who stayed in the area and gradually moved from ranching into mining.

Or so the story went; nobody really knew the truth. Lucas's European origins were a mystery; AJ had always been curious whether that side of the family was Scottish or German, or something more exotic, but Lucas didn't care at all. His childhood world revolved around a mining camp near the Colorado border; he finished high school at the onset of WW II, immediately joined the Navy, and headed for the Pacific Ocean.

Norma supplied a condensed version of the story to the school official, who seemed satisfied. The remaining details — year of birth, address, previous school, etc. — were promptly supplied, and the discussion turned to one last item: to which classroom should AJ be assigned? "We have only two first-grade classes," she explained to Norma, "and they're both rather crowded. What's your son's birthday?"

"April 30th," AJ piped up, annoyed that she didn't ask him directly.

"April 30th?" frowned the registration woman. "Oh, dear!"

"What's the problem?" asked Norma.

"Well, April 30th is the date we use to separate the classes," she sighed. "If your son was born before April 30th, he would go in Mr. Harrison's class; if he was born after, he would be in Miss Slater's room. But if it's right on April 30th ... well, we've only had one situation like this before ... "

Norma shrugged and waited for Registration-Woman to solve her bureaucratic dilemma. After a moment of staring at the form and fondling her double chin, she looked up brightly and chortled, "You know what we'll do? We'll just put young Jonathan here into second grade." She paused to inspect him. "Can you read yet?"

AJ smiled. "Yes, ma'am, I can read. And write. And count. I can stand on my head and spit wooden nickels, if you'd like."

"Well, that's settled then," she beamed at Norma.

Hey! AJ thought. What am I — chopped liver? What is this? No Scholastic Aptitude Test. No interview with the guidance counselor. No discussion. Bang! I've just been skipped a grade.

He remembered the outcome from BeforeTime, but he had forgotten the justification for the decision: the simple coincidence of two overcrowded classes and the fluke of a bureaucratically inconvenient birthday. Registration Lady would give it no further thought, he realized, and was blissfully unaware of the impact it would have on the next ten years of his life: from now on, he would always be a year younger than his classmates. No, I'm not a freak, he would have to explain over and over again in the coming years, in schools in Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, California, and Nebraska.

Back home again, Norma told him to play in his room while she continued unpacking boxes in their new apartment. If this were BeforeTime, he thought, she might have suggested watching Sesame Street or playing a Nintendo game. But this was the 50s, he realized; wooden blocks, toy cars made of gray metal, and simple-minded children's books were the instruments with which he was expected to entertain himself. There was nothing battery-powered; it boggled his mind to imagine 80s-generation children surviving in a room like this. Hopalong Cassidy was a big hit this year; for his sixth birthday, he had been equipped with toy six-shooters, spurs, boots, a vest with tin star, and an enormous white hat. He tried on the vest, but a knee-jerk reaction stopped him when he saw his reflection in the mirror: What if someone I know sees me in this stupid outfit?

For the moment, the toys were left untouched: he still needed to contemplate his new world. It continued to astound him that he might be able to alter events in his life; he scanned back through a mental videotape of his former life, looking for the crises, the close calls, the defeats, and disappointments. Most of them would occur much later, but he still remembered vividly the summer that he and Lucas contracted polio in Denver; it was in 1951, during a hot, sticky summer when they frequently visited a neighborhood swimming pool ... infested, as he now saw in his mind's eye, with zillions of polio bugs. And there would come a time, five years later, when a friend would shoot an arrow into his face, missing his eye by an inch, while they were imitating Robin Hood in the woods outside Omaha. That was grim, too, he thought.

But nothing profound had occurred when he was six. Indeed, the only reason he remembered anything about his BeforeTime life was that it had been punctuated by annual moves to new cities and new schools; even as an adult, when he continued to move frequently and travel widely, he could usually remember any arbitrary date in the past few years by remembering what city he had been in. It had always puzzled him how people could remember anything about events in their lives if they lived forever in one house and one city; as far as he could tell, life for such people blurred together into an indistinct haze.

Something else I'm gonna have to get used to, he thought, is the primitive technology around here. There were no computers in NowTime, he reminded himself; there were no color TVs. For that matter, there were no TVs in the majority of homes, and certainly not in his. No Truth or Consequences, no George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, no What's My Line?, no Steve Allen Show. No VCRs, no push-button phones, no answering machines, no roller skates with Teflon wheels, no Sony Walkmans, no Diet Coke, no ... it was mind-boggling to think how primitive this world was. No rock and roll, no peace movement, no integration, no Watergate, no Presidential TV debates.

And the biggest issue of all, he thought: What should I do if I really can have "do-overs"? He had often thought about this casually in the context of a single event: "Boy, if I could do that over again, it sure would be different." But a whole lifetime of do-overs, and the possibility of real do-overs, was mind-boggling. The reality suddenly hit him like a hard punch to the stomach: a wife, two sons and a daughter that he wouldn't see again for more than twenty years — assuming, of course, that he would see them at all. He could still see their faces clearly in his mind's eye, could still see exactly Ann's smile, Danny's face, Sarah's pout, and Zack's wiry torso. But will those memories fade in time? he wondered.

As he lay on his cot, he felt engulfed by the loneliness; it hit him so harshly that he rolled over and began whimpering into his pillow. But there was no relief; gradually he began thinking. This is here. This is now. This is me. This is Glen Oaks, New York. For better or for worse, this is it.

The reverie came to an abrupt end, as Norma called from the kitchen that it was time for dinner. That means Dad is home from work, AJ thought. Maybe he's forgotten about the milk bottle incident at breakfast and will be so busy talking about his work day that he won't even notice me.

As he hoisted himself up on the chair, he saw that this was indeed the case; Lucas was slouched at the table, still in his white shirt, with tie loosened, recounting the day's internecine warfare between his boss over something he had done, while Norma briskly moved dishes and platters to the table while making polite noises from time to time.

A slab of meatloaf was plopped on AJ's plate (yum!), a gob of mash potatoes was slopped down beside it (okay), followed by an enormous serving of lima beans (yech!). He stared at the plate, loathing the shiny green little turds, but knowing from BeforeTime memories that he would be required to swallow every bite before leaving the table. Meanwhile the discussion of office politics droned on over his head.

"Excuse me," AJ interrupted, when they paused for a moment. "Could I please have the salt and pepper? And the butter, too?"

Norma smiled at him, and reached over to tousle his hair. "What for, honey?"

AJ was surprised by the question, but responded politely: "For the mashed potatoes. I always like a little more salt and pepper, and some butter in the middle."

Lucas scowled at AJ. "You don't need that stuff, kiddo. Your Mom put plenty of salt and pepper in the potatoes. It's fine like it is."

Good grief, AJ thought. This is going to be a real pain in the ass, if I have to justify everything I do from now on. Turning his attention back to his plate, he wondered what kind of food his six year old body was going to crave, and how it would conform to Norma's cooking. Some things hadn't changed a bit: he still detested oatmeal and lima beans, and he did his best to avoid warm, mushy, cooked desserts. And some things involved acquired tastes from BeforeTime: he was sure he had never complained about the peas and carrots he was served as a child, but now he noticed that they came from a can and were far soggier than the fresh, crisp vegetables Ann prepared for dinner. Meat, potatoes, and milk were still acceptable; and peanut butter was a wonderful rediscovery, especially since it reminded him of the days when he poured gobs of honey directly into the jar and stirred it into a sweet, gooey mess.

With a quick mental calculation, AJ suddenly realized that Norma was only 28, Lucas 29. Mere babes! he thought. They seemed so young — so vibrant and full of life, and yet so naive and inexperienced. He had a hard time reconciling Norma's unlined face and slim figure with the weathered face of the 60ish grandmother that he left behind in 1985. Lucas, he remembered, would have a long beard, a pot belly, and salt-and-pepper hair combed back severely from a widow's peak in later life; it was impossible to pin those features on this sullen young firebrand with his narrow frame and his full head of jet-black hair.

Something else that was hard to reconcile was Lucas's obsession with politics. This is weird, he thought. I can't even remember if he's a Republican or Democrat. Lucas was now waving a fork at Norma while telling her about the aftermath of the espionage trial of someone AJ had never head of: Judith Coplon and her Russian boyfriend, Valentin Gubitchev. [2]

"Both of them were found guilty today," he said. "And can you believe what that idiot prosecutor said?"

Norma shook her head. There was a sad smile on her face that AJ couldn't understand.

"He's a Jew —Irving Saypol — one of those guys always looking under a rock for Communists," Lucas said vehemently. "And when the trial finished, he stood up in front of the microphones and said, `We in government are not oblivious to the sinister attempts to undermine us and we shall continue aggressively and forthrightly to vindicate our laws and protect our country.' All because they found some idiot secretary playing grab-ass with an embassy clerk."

AJ was surprised at the thought that Lucas might be a liberal; it didn't fit with his conservative upbringing in a Utah mining town. But maybe it's a normal reaction against the beginning of the McCarthy era, he thought. He remembered that 1950 was the year Alger Hiss was sentenced to five years in jail for perjury and the year that President Truman imposed a ban on trade with Communist China. And it's the year that Herbert Hoover proposed the United Nations should be reorganized without the Communist nations in it, he thought. That's weird — where on earth did I remember that from?

Norma wasn't aware of Saypol's speech, it turned out, as Lucas recited the history to her. Lucas was furious that Congress had gotten involved: the House had just overridden Truman's veto of the Internal Security Act, which required all Communist groups to report the identity of their officers, and barred them from defense-related jobs. Truman had argued that the law was unconstitutional and would drive Communists underground; to AJ's amazement, Lucas quoted Truman's comments on the Act from memory:

Lucas's conversation turned to the Korean War, which was in the forefront of public events. It was only a month earlier, he reminded Norma, that Truman had ordered the army to call up 262,000 army reserves for military duty [3]. AJ could tell that it was a move that struck fear in the hearts of World War II veterans who were still young enough to risk being called up again. And only a week ago, on August 25th, Truman had ordered the government to seize the railroads to avoid a strike; management had offered an 18-cent per hour increase to yardmen, but would not extend the raise to trainmen. The union had voted to strike, but Truman ordered that the army would run the railroad until a settlement was reached.

"The Army!" Lucas shouted. "Next thing you know, he'll have the damned Army running the Post Office!"

"Where's it all going to lead?" Norma asked, shaking her head; so far, AJ noticed, she had made no comment on the political events that Lucas was so agitated about. She gave Lucas a second helping of meatloaf, and took more mashed potatoes for herself — but automatically assumed that AJ wouldn't ask for seconds.

AJ had forgotten all about the Korean War, but now realized that he was living in the middle of it again. "Have they made the assault on Inchon yet?" he asked, suddenly intrigued to be watching a small segment of history beginning to replay itself.

"Inchon? Where's that?" asked Lucas, frowning at him. He had ignored the meat-loaf on his plate, and was picking at his teeth, making strange sucking noises with a toothpick. AJ had forgotten his routine with the toothpicks; he was nauseated by the spectacle, but there was no point commenting on it.

He saw that Norma was looking at him strangely, too. "What are you talking about, child? What do you know about Korea?"

This is something six year old children are not expected to know about, AJ suddenly realized. And if the Inchon assault has not happened yet, then it's not something that anyone — aside from Douglas MacArthur and his staff-should know anything about. Actually, it was September 5th that the troops swarmed ashore, and September 16th when Seoul was recaptured [4]. The operation, supported by a naval armada of 200 ships, had been widely expected, but the location was a surprise to everyone except AJ. The low tides and the mud flats at Inchon made an amphibious landing a nightmare, but MacArthur's invasion forces achieved complete surprise and suffered only minor injuries. But it was later that AJ learned all this; meanwhile, tonight, he was learning that total surprise was definitely not a good idea when dealing with Mom and Dad.

"Oh, I must have heard it in school, from one of the kids," he shrugged. "I don't even know where it is. Isn't Korea part of Kansas?"

Laughing, they turned away from him and returned to their own world of conversation. The discussion about Korea came to an end; the Inchon landing had not yet happened, apparently, and nothing really noteworthy had been announced in the papers about the war. They don't even know that history is being made while they live through it, AJ thought. It occurred to him that there are only a few events — major earthquakes, the end of a war, or the assassination of a president — when everyone knows that history is being created, and that they should mentally record every detail for later recollection. But most days are like this quiet Tuesday after Labor Day, he thought. Peaceful and quiet, and then totally forgotten, as if they had never existed.

A note of anxiety in Norma's voice made him tune back into their conversation, but since he busy burying the last of the lima beans in the mashed potatoes, he didn't look up at her face.

"I saw him this morning," she said in a soft, tight voice.

"Who?" asked Lucas.

AJ glanced up in time to see the tension in her face. "Don't be stupid. Him."

Lucas scowled, his swarthy eyebrows knotting together. He started to answer, but saw AJ watching. "What are you looking at, sport? Aren't you finished yet? Why don't you go see what's on the radio — maybe it's time for the Lone Ranger."

Something serious is going on, AJ thought. He climbed down silently and walked around the table, behind Lucas's chair, and out of the kitchen. Lucas couldn't see him as he responded to Norma, and he couldn't tell that AJ was still in hearing range.

"The old man again? Norma, don't be ridiculous. It must have just been someone who looked like him. We're thousands of miles away from Denver, and we left no forwarding address. You're just edgy. Next thing you know, you're gonna tell me it's some kind of damned Communist plot!"

What on earth does that mean? AJ thought. But Norma was beginning to raise her head and look up, and he realized that she would catch him spying if he didn't disappear. He scampered quietly down the hallway and into the living room. But he wondered about the implications: something was happening that he didn't understand and that he apparently wasn't supposed to know about. On the other hand, he thought, maybe it's an isolated incident of some kind. Things are pretty uncomplicated in the 50s.

As he skipped down the hallway, he remembered there was only one radio in the house, in the living room. No instant-on transistor radios in 1950, he thought. No clock radios; no Sony Walkmans that you can wear on your wrist while you do your morning run. The Halifax family radio was an old gray Emerson, filled with bulky vacuum tubes. AJ had no BeforeTime memory of it, but the control knobs were in the right place, and after waiting for what seemed an interminable period for it to warm up, he scanned through the frequencies, looking for the Lone Ranger or anything else to pass the time.

Meanwhile, his mind was churning. What could they be running from? Could they be spies, hiding from the FBI? Are they another Julius and Ethel Rosenberg? The possibility was suggested by a news report he stumbled upon, halfway up the radio dial: "A fraud has been perpetrated upon the Senate," the announcer announced, quoting a report from Senator Millard Tyding's panel investigating Joseph McCarthy's charges of Communist infiltration of the State Department. The committee Democrats had asserted that McCarthy's accusation was using the "technique of the Big Lie" for personal and political gain, complaining that although four earlier House committees had reviewed McCarthy's charges and discovered no cause for alarm, the FBI and the Civil Service Commission had already purged 20,000 [5] suspected radicals from the federal payroll. And the brouhaha continued: Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, whose name was familiar to AJ as the father of Ted Kennedy's opponent in the 1962 Massachusetts senatorial campaign, has written a dissenting opinion, labeling the Tyding report "superficial and inconclusive." McCarthy, on the other hand, described it as a "green light for Reds" and charged that FBI evidence had been "raped and rifled."

They're all nuts, AJ thought, wondering when McCarthy would fade from the scene. Whenever it is, it won't be 1950. The guy is obviously just getting started. On a happier note, the announcer reported that the first census since World War II has counted 150.6 million Americans, of whom 64 percent were urban dwellers; the announcer seems discouraged that there are only 5.4 million family farmers. He should see what it's like in the 1980s, AJ thought. The Korean War had had one good effect on the national statistics: the reporter announced cheerfully that because of the war effort, unemployment was now below two million, and the average weekly industrial wage had hit a new high of $160.53. [6] Illiteracy was down to a new low of 3.2 percent, but a study indicated that half the population did not read books anyway. And this is before the TV generation has even begun, AJ thought. It's just going to get worse.

I've had enough of the news, AJ thought, and he looked unsuccessfully for something entertaining. Damn! No FM stations. The remaining stations on the AM band were playing music-music, he suddenly realized, that he hadn't heard for years. Bing Crosby crooned on one station, Glenn Miller held forth on another, and a Beethoven sonata reminded him that classical music had survived not only the 1950s, but all the decades before and since. A sports announcer exulted that the Yankees had swept their Labor Day double-header and were looking almost unbeatable; it reminded AJ of a sports variation of Trivial Pursuit that he had played shortly before his abrupt entry into NowTime, in which Sarah had been the only one to correctly answer that the Yankees beat the Brooklyn Dodgers, four games to one, [7] in the 1950 World Series. God, if only I could find a bookie, AJ thought. There's a fortune to be made here. But at this stage in his new existence, he realized that the chances of pulling off such a maneuver are nonexistent. It would be enough of a victory if I could just talk Dad and Mom into taking me to a game. Joe DiMaggio must be in his prime, he thought, but I can't remember who else is playing on the 1950 Yankees.

So much was happening in 1950 — so much that AJ had been unaware of the first time around, or that he vaguely knew and then forgot. While the McCarthy and Korean events dominated the public consciousness, this was also the year that Rogers and Hammerstein (and a third composer, Joshua Logan , whose name AJ never heard again) won the Pulitzer for South Pacific. And it was the year that All About Eve won the Oscar for best picture. It was the year that William Faulkner received the Nobel prize for literature, and Ralph Bunche was awarded the Nobel Peace prize for his work in mediating the conflict between Jews and Arabs in the Holy Land. A harbinger of plastic money appeared in 1950: the Diners' Club card was introduced. The first one was made of cardboard, and was issued to 2,000 members, allowing them to charge food and entertainment at participating establishments, all 128 of whom were listed on the back of the card. [8]

But it was also the year the federal government implemented the draft to increase the size of the military, and it was the year that formal recognition was granted to the South Vietnamese regime of Bao Dai. AJ was even more depressed to discover that 1950 marked, in a minor way, the beginning of the Vietnamese conflict that would torment his generation a decade later: Secretary of State Dean Acheson, the same statesman described by Joe McCarthy earlier this year as a "pompous diplomat in striped pants with a phony British accent," announced that the U.S. was prepared to help the French defeat a rising Communist insurgency in Indochina. To combat Ho Chi Minh's Communist forces, who had declared their intention to liberate Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam from the French Union, Acheson would offer France up to $100 million in economic and military aid. [9]

After an hour, AJ decided that he had had enough for one day. His mind was spinning with the flood of newly remembered experiences, information, events, and emotions. And he was tired, far more exhausted than he would have expected from his limited physical activity. In any case, it was dark outside, and he decided to get into his pajamas before someone yelled at him again; it had already become clear that his normal bedtime was around eight o'clock. This was an annoying discovery, after spending the past 25 years organizing his life around a schedule based on eight hours of sleep a night. But there was no escaping the demands of his small body, he realized; it needed eleven hours of sleep each night, whether he liked it or not. And while he couldn't remember whether he went to bed this early when he was a child in BeforeTime, he did remember that eight o'clock was the hour that Zack and Sarah conked out when they were six, and it was well past Danny's bedtime at the age of five. So maybe it's not so unreasonable, he thought.

Norma was still in the kitchen, washing dishes and unpacking boxes; Lucas had disappeared into their bedroom. It was a tiny apartment: a box-like living room, one bedroom, the kitchen/dining parlor, and a bathroom. The scale of the rooms was enormous for his new small size, but his adult mind sized it up and realized how cramped it was. With a sigh, he padded quietly down the hall to the alcove off the kitchen, thinking how curious it was that one's childhood perceptions of size remained frozen in later memories, even though they would prove to be completely inaccurate if anyone had a chance to form them again in adult life. Do-overs, in this case, are a real let-down, he muttered. It would have been better to remember this apartment as a palatial mansion.

After an exhausting first day in NowTime, he began acclimating himself to his new world. It began on the following morning, which marked his first full day in school: Norma took him on the bus again, but reminded him to watch where they were going so that he could travel alone the next day. She turned him loose at the school entrance, and he navigated his way into the classroom, where a dreamy-eyed teacher named Goldberg pointed him to a desk that had already been assigned to him.

And there on the desk was his first major surprise: a link to the past that he left behind only a few days ago. The star picture was brightly colored and drawn with crayons:

The drawing irritated him: he had an instinct that someone had left it on his desk to taunt him, as if staking out a territory. He crumpled the paper into a tight ball -- but before he could rise from his desk to throw the drawing in the trash can by Miss Goldberg's desk, she was standing above him.

"Jonathan, Jonathan!" she said, in a soft reproachful tone. "That drawing was a gift to you. You'll hurt someone's feelings if you destroy it. Don't you think it would be a nice idea to save it and take it home with you?"

As an adult, AJ might have argued the point; as a child, he was not sure it was worth the effort — and it occurred to him that it would be wiser not to annoy Miss Goldberg at the beginning of the school year. So he carefully un-crumpled the drawing, smoothed it out, and placed it in the lunch box his mother had given him. Meanwhile, Miss Goldberg moved on to squelch a fight between two wild-eyed boys on the other side of the room; the howls and shrieks reminded him once again that he was no longer in the land of adults.

But gradually, he learned that it was okay for him to play in the manner that young children were expected to play. The six- and seven-year old kids loved to root around in the dirt and build elaborate mud houses in the playground; after watching them for several days, he finally joined in. Tag, hide-and-seek, climbing trees, hanging from the jungle gym, and playing on the swings were hardly an intellectual delight, but the activities did provide an outlet for the physical energy that bubbled up and out of his body on a spontaneous basis. In the classroom, despite his best efforts, there were times when it was impossible for him to control the wriggling, bouncing, and twitching that his body wanted to carry out. No wonder the teachers yell at us so much, he thought.

Meanwhile,