Speak Now, or Forever Hold Your Peace.

(Let's time travel for a moment. I'm going to bring you to a point in the future that will be a great day for me. My wedding day. Why, you might be asking yourself, are we going there? When it comes to the point in my life that I'll actually get married, I think that I'll be a different guy. I won't be showing this poor unfortunate woman my bad habits that have accumalated throughout the years. If I don't go and warn this woman now, she won't find out until it's too late. So get ready. I see the ceremony now. The pastor is getting to the point where he'll say those dreaded words "Speak Now, or Forever Hold Your Peace." Ah, here's our chance. Dear reader, welcome to my wedding.)

The crowd gasps as I suddenly appear. People who have known me for a long time are shocked to see me, the younger Tim, or using a Dicken's term, the ghost of Tim past. I walk forward.

"I object to this wedding."

The pastor looks at the bride and groom, baffled. He looks at me again. "May I ask who you are?"

"I'm Tim Jousma." A gasp errupts in the chapel. The pastor's face is gradually growing white.

"Wha...,what do you mean?" The pastor whispers out.

"I can vouge for him," the Tim of the future says. "That was me. Let him speak."

"Thank you, uh, me," I begin. I turn and address the crowd.

"Hello people. I'm Tim Jousma. Obviously not the one about to get married, but Tim at age 20. I've not come here to break this union but I do want to tell this woman here what she's getting herself into. I'm sure I didn't tell her about my bad habits, did I Tim?"

Tim shakes his head no.

"I didn't think so. Anyway, where to begin. O.k. Tonight will be the first night you two will be sleeping in the same bed together. Now, you may have called me or something and heard my voice when I'm tired. You haven't seen me though, right?"

The bride nods in agreement.

"Well let me tell ya, I look like a 70 year old jewish woman in the morning. Did Tim tell you that? I didn't think so. Anyway, that's one thing. What else? Did you know that Tim there is an agoraphobic? That's fear of crowds, if you didn't know that. He can't walk around anywhere alone and feel comfortable because he gets paranoid and thinks everyone's talking about him. What a nut! And the weird thing is, put this guy in a play and he ain't that bad. His big thing is that he needs to focus on someone in order to feel comfortable. Comfort in small numbers, I guess.

"He's also an obsessive-compulsive. He's stuck in a never ending maze of rituals he has to perform in order to be happy in life. His show of emotions are rare, most of the time he just shrugs them off. And when he gets involved in something that he likes, he gives 1000% of his attention in studying and mastering whatever that thing is.

"Which brings me to my ast topic. One of his favorite hobbies is his music collection. Don't start him talking about t! You'll be trapped for hours while he drones on and on about it.

"Well, that's all I have to say. I hope I didn't trouble anyone, especially the bride, with all my revelations about Tim. Are you still going to marry him?"

She looks at me and starts to laugh.

"I'm not marrying the ghost of Tim past, I'm marrying this Tim. And I'll say this. If I had met you instead of this Tim, we wouldn't be here today." The crowd in the chapel begin to cheer. The bride goes over to Tim and gives him a kiss.

"Well that's good to hear," I say. I walk over to Tim and whisper in his ear.

"Hey, you did a good job finding this great woman. Have a good time tonight, if you know what I mean." I start laughing.

"I plan to. See ya later, guy."

So I leave.

(Whew! We're back. Thanks for coming along with me. I really dreaded going alone on that trip. It was pretty cool seeing how good everything looked in my life at that point. Or was it? Who knows, it could have just been a work of fiction.)