McFly Visits 2020
From the desk of Transporter Editor Reed Hollinshead:
Remember Marty McFly in Back to the Future in 1985 when he time-traveled to 2015? What if he’d visited 2020 instead?
He’d see everyone wearing masks, and might conclude that most everyone in the future was a criminal or had bad intentions. Unfortunately, he wouldn't be 100% wromg about that. He'd see most restaurants and bars closed, and no one going to movie theaters or gyms. With most people working from home and most brick and-mortar buildings having only a handful of workers actually onsite, he might conclude that in the future there is no work, or very little of it. Or even better from a slacker’s point of view, no need to work.
He'd see everyone trying to stay at least six feet apart, and would wonder why no one really liked each other in the future.
He’d be appalled that everyday citizens weren’t scooting around on hoverboards and jet packs, and that traffic still used regular roads and highways, not routes up in the sky. He’d probably wonder if we’d mastered the time-saving art of t
eleporting yet. He and Doc Brown could have figured it out by now!
He’d have skipped right past some major cultural milestones. He’d have missed Michael Jordan’s six NBA titles for instance. As far as he knows, Jordan is a scoring machine from North Carolina, but can’t get past Joe Dumars and the Pistons. And he’d never believe that the titles didn’t happen until a former walk-on named Scottie Pippen from Central Arkansas came along. Central Arkansas!
And no college or pro football in the fall. He would probably have a hard time believing that Tom Brady and the New England Patriots were once a juggernaut with six Super Bowl wins. Heck, last he saw the Chicago Bears were unstoppable, the 46 Defense and West Coast Offense were the Gold Standards, and no one was likely to beat the four rings of the Steelers.
He’d probably discover that golf seems to be going strong, yet he would have completely missed the best years of the most dominant golfer of the era, Tiger Woods. He’d see the flashes of brilliance now and then from Woods, but not know that Tiger was awesome, day in and day out, for most of the time he skipped over.
McFly would be surprised to find out that the kind and grandfatherly Bill Cosby from Thursday nights on NBC is anything but kind or grandfatherly, George Michael is not as advertised, and neither is that new sensation called Milli Vanilli...although he might not be suprised that their lips didn't always seem to line up with the music. He’d have missed the entire decade of 90’s music, in fact, and really not have missed that much.
He’d be comforted to know that most of the action stars from 1985 — Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Harrison Ford, Tom Cruise — are still at it in 2020, but just look like they’ve lost a step or two.
He’d never believe that Schwarzenegger had been a state governor. Or that AOL and MySpace weren’t raging successes across the planet. That Facebook and Twitter were now a thing, He’d have wished he invested a few dollars into Starbucks, Microsoft and Apple back then, and placed a bet or two on that football team from New England. And maybe kept an eye out for a company called Google. Or one called Amazon.
He’d watch an NBA game and see “Black Lives Matter” scrawled on the court and be saddened that something so self evident has to even be said in 2020. “Of course” he’d say, “ALL lives matter.” No one needs to travel 35 years into the future to figure that one out.
Published 08-14-20