Two boys, one ten the other nine are lying on the ground looking up at the blue sky at the huge cumulus clouds, using their hands as head rests.
They are day-dreaming about the future and what it was going to be like, when they grow up. The year was 1960, a hot sunny day.
They imagined by the year 1980 people would be flying around the city with miniature jet engines attached to their backs. Cars would have no wheels, there would be no more need to pave another parking lot. People would live forever, sickness a thing of the past. There would be no more school. No one ate meat anymore. Aliens would land, and save the world, before we annihilated ourselves. The weather would become more stable and it would snow forever, everyday would be Christmas. Toys would drop from the heavens. Everything was going to be perfect, you didn't have to brush your teeth or wash your hands anymore, kids stuff.
They had just returned from seeing the new movie release that year, Frankenstein 1970 a science fiction horror film (1959), shot in black and white, starring Boris Karloff their all time favourite actor, playing at a local movie theatre, a Saturday afternoon matinee, for kids. It cost a whole quarter. Each!
It had left them mesmerized.
The youngest boy turned to the other and said, "If it's going to be that scary in 1970 what will it be like farther in the future, say in 2018? We'll both be old men by then, really old, in our sixties, going on seventy."
"A real scary world," the other replied, "we might not be alive."
"I'm going to live forever," the younger boy replied.
Well... Here it is 2018, and I am lying on the couch looking up at the shadows on the ceiling, thinking of my little childhood friend and the day we were lying on the front lawn, daydreaming looking up at the sky, daydreaming of the future, thinking of the movie Frankenstein 1970. Such a long time ago, eh?
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