When I was a child my parents very good friends were another English couple who had emigrated too. They lived on Long Island, New York, I think in Bellport. It was an area where all the houses had canals for the boats, and Eric and Edith had a nice sailboat. Eric was a physicist, I suppose, at a nuclear plant, and had been a fighter pilot during the war. He took my brother flying sometimes. I adored Eric as he was very goofy and funny. Edith was a doctor. She was always calm and quiet and that was appealing, too.

They had no children at that time, and as well as outings with everyone I remember staying at their house with my sister. The canals were packed full of jellyfish, and I can remember letting them dry on the hot ground to make "paper." Once when I was with my family I fell off the pier and into the canal. I was stung about 5789 billion times, and someone fished me out (unconscious) and Edith applied a new kind of anti-jellyfish-sting ointmant that worked very well. I hotly denied having fallen into the water. The grown-ups were startled and amused, but I remembered (still do) standing on the pier, then waking up in the house. There was nothing inbetween. I remembered nothing about falling into a canal full of jellyfish and so therefore it must never've happened. I probably happened into a hole in time, lived several lifetimes, then traveled back to that time.

I thought of that fragment from my past because one of the new Combat Cards is named Stinging Stab.

Labels: Combat Cards, Introduction to Time Travel