How I could be just in time to save the world
The circumference of my head is 48cm. I once lifted a rock that weighed at least 50kg. I put my back out and spent three days walking like a poisoned rat, but I did it.
When I heard about the recent advert on Gumtree, where a woman was seeking a time-travelling companion with a head no bigger than 64cm who was able to do heavy lifting, my antennae went on alert. The woman said the trip in her time machine would start on a Friday and involve a visit to June 1983, where she would “handle some business”. We’d be back in time for Carte Blanche. It seemed too good to be true. I wanted in.
1983 was not my finest year. I had Barry Manilow hair, a man-eating horse called Playboy gave me a near-mastectomy, and Paula Nelson was getting better marks than me. I also got in trouble for bringing a dead snake to school. It stank out assembly, and I spent three weeks of punishment cleaning the girls’ toilets.
Perhaps now I could go back and do things differently. I could use a hot-brush, take up roller-skating, and kidnap Paula Nelson. And maybe I could tamper with history to ensure a better life for all.
First up would be an assassination. Granted, I don’t have the faintest clue about AK-47s or petrol bombs, but there was that stinky reptile and the cannibal horse. As PW Botha stood on the podium, waving his crocodile finger and declaring the launch of the Tricameral Constitution, I could lob the snake at him, and amid the ensuing chaos set a food-deprived Playboy on the old geezer. Maybe then, politics would cease to be a one-horse race, and those gathered in Mitchells Plain to launch the UDF would seize the opportunity. Desmond Tutu would become president. Everyone would go on to have jobs and houses. No one would have to talk about wealth tax.
Next up would be rugby. When baby Bryan Habana enters the world on June 12, 1983, I would lurk near his hospital crib and whisper into his still-perfect ears: “Bryan, you will go on to be a great rugby player. You will be very fast and look unusually good in a mouth guard. Your team will be one of the finest in the world, but at some point a small man with a big moustache and a funny voice will come and ruin it all. Don’t listen to him, just keep running. Then, maybe, your team will be victorious in 2011.”
With just one day of my mission left, I would then turn to fashion. If you look around Long Street, you will agree the Eighties left a scary legacy. Back then, overblown shoulder pads, ripped T-shirts, neon earrings and bubble skirts made us look like a hideous band of refugees from a Madonna video. Court shoes with leg-warmers, belts with clip-on butterflies, leggings with T-shirts, yellow handbags – it looked rubbish then; it looks rubbish now.
To safeguard future generations from the scourge of cut-off gloves, mullets and kung-fu shoes, I would pioneer an enduring trend of plain black T-shirts, jeans and high-top trainers. That way, future fashions would have a blank canvas – and I would always be in vogue.
In the hours before my departure back to 2011, I might try to infiltrate the airwaves – maybe storm a radio station or spread a violent strain of laryngitis across London and Los Angeles. In so doing, we would be spared the tight-crotch squeaks of the Bee Gees’ Staying Alive soundtrack and the greasy cheese of Wham’s! Club Tropicana. Madonna would be as silent as a virgin touched by influenza for the very first time, and Boy George would bypass a music career to become fat on pies. And as Michael Jackson prepared to début his moonwalk on ABC television, I would grab him by the collar and hiss: “Mickey baby, stay away from the propofol and the lorazepam. Don’t get taken in by Diana Ross – your nose is perfect as it is.”
Back home on Sunday evening in 2011, I would settle on the couch in my fashionable jeans and takkies. On Carte Blanche, President Tutu would detail the government’s plans to install jacuzzis in all RDP mansions, Michael Jackson would perform a single from his new album, and the All Blacks would lament the fact the Boks hadn’t been beaten in four years. I would smile, smooth down my singed hair, and congratulate myself on time well spent.