The Future Kid

Chapter one: Coming out

I first learned I was from the future two months ago when I correctly picked all seven Super Chance numbers on the weekly lottery seconds before they were actually drawn. One right after the other they came to me. Like Danielle Steele novels to the book shelves at K-Mart. With lightening speed I conjured the numbers that so many west side trailer trash dwellers no doubt longed to have. They’ve been playing the lottery for years, wasting the money they could have been spending on roach killer or food, and I get the $36 million dollar winning numbers on my first try.

My CEO father would have been proud.

Of course I couldn’t tell him. The man was so uptight that any oddity he saw in me needed to be immediately diagnosed and treated with the latest brain draining medication.

And this oddity would by far be the most devastating one he could here. There could only be one possible explanation for all of this…I am not from this time. I would have had to have seen these numbers drawn already. In the future of yesterday.

I tried for several weeks to keep my new found freaktatude from my overly judgmental parents. I couldn’t imagine what they would do to me if they found out.

“How could you keep this from us Mike? We’re your PARENTS!!”

Well…that reaction is a given. I get that when I don’t tell them I opened the new Doritos bag.

Something more along the lines of, “well then Mr. Advanced, why don’t you change out of your primitive loin cloths, slip into something a little more ‘so-ten-years-from-now,’ pack a bag with gadgets that don’t exists, swallow a six course meal pill, wake up your robot companion, and jet pack your ass out to the street, because only people from 1988 will be living under my roof,” is what I expected to get. People don’t understand that just because I’m from the future doesn’t mean I’m different.

But sure enough, week four of my secret keeping rolled around and the question and answer sessions began. I wouldn’t be able to hold myself much longer.

It happened at breakfast one fateful morning. Ok, it was actually six o’clock at night, but we were having eggs for dinner.

“So Mike,” my mom began probing. “Would you like mo…”

My heart was racing, she’s on to me. What should I do? I looked around me, sweat pouring from my skin, and noticed my father, eating his eggs, pretending oblivion. What should I do? I don’t want to have to jet pack my ass out to the street. Quick! Come up with a lie…GOD! I don’t even have a jet pack.

I look at my mother like a scared squirrel she stood over me like the statue of liberty, spatula in hand. My lack of jet packing ability is bound to add more fuel to the already blazing fire.

“You come all the way from the future…and you didn’t even bring a jet pack?” They’d be furious at my incompetence. They got angry when I didn’t buy them souvenirs from the Sea World trip they took me on.

“Mike,” I hear my mom say, trying to bring me back to the real world. “Mike!”

I look at her, focus in on her chubby monkey trapped in cage like features. “More eggs?”

“OK!!!” I screamed, not being able to take their games any more. “I didn’t want you to have to find out this way.”

Their smirkey smiles of satisfaction and supremacy were all ready beginning to form on their milk mustachioed faces. They were finally going to get the truth they wanted.

“Oh my God Mike,” my mother began, playing her pleasure off as concern. “I should have known…You’re lactose intolerant aren’t you?” He voice was shaky as she looked at me so I could see the fake tear run down the side of her cheek.

Sadly, what I had to tell her and my father, who had taken the liberty of eating the rest of the eggs, was much more heart wrenching than a fake intolerance to lactose. It would be a revelation more chilling that time we learned the fat lady next door slept in the nude. It would kill my father and most likely embarrass my mother to the point of her canceling her monthly book club because she wouldn’t be able to stand the sight of the blue haired old hags who never really read the books but relished the chance the meetings gave them to raid our fridge and steal our sugar free candy which we started keeping after a similar incident when I revealed I was joining chess club but my mother thought I was diabetic.

“I’m from the future,” I blurted out.

“So,” my mother said, evidently not caring but with a shake still present in her voice.

“So I guess I’ll start buying soy milk when I pick up your sugar free candy.” But it soon became clear that she was not fully understanding of the situation.

“Do they sell soy ice cream? Maybe that will help you make the lactose free transition because I’m not spending your father’s hard earned millions on pills. What about chocolate soy milk? Well I suppose you could just use the chocolate syrup with the regular soy milk. You’re not allergic to stirring are you? There is no dairy in that chocolate syrup is there? No, I suppose not. OH! But it’s full of sugar…you’ve really worked yourself into a bind.”

I stormed off to my room, stomach swirling and mind hurting but not from a reaction with lactose.

End of Chapter One