I Am in a Store - Time Machine

I am walking through double doors into a store.
The glass doors are smooth and cool against the
side of my hand. The doors open smoothly without
a sound. I walk through the entrance doors, and
the main store doors- and then
there is a narrow strip of dark indoor/outdoor
type carpet leading down a narrow aisle to a larger
aisle which runs the full width of the store.
All around are mannequins modeling clothing,
and silver chrome clothes rods with metal hangers
upon them, garments in all different colors and sizes.
There is nobody else in the store, which would
seem odd, really, except that this is my own
personal world, found after I went thru a time machine-
which makes it no less real to me, by the way.
There are mirrors placed conspicuously along the
walls for trying on garments. The place smells
of new clothing and a slight disinfectant odor
of, perhaps, carpet cleaning chemicals. The white tile floors
are very shiny and appear freshly waxxed as always.
I am conscious of the swooshing of my own clothing
as I begin to walk faster. Since this is a rare experience,
I don't want to waste any time. The store is my
oyster, so to speak. Where would a childs mind
(since I went back in time to this place)
most want to go play in such a place? Probably
the toy section and the little booth where they sell
hand poured chocolates. So sure enough, down the way
I catch sight of a "confections" sign. These sweets
will be as wonderful as all my memories (and also
calorie free perhaps?). I walk to the booth and look thru
all the little glass panes, the wonderful shiny tones
of the chocolate, coconut..nuts. I open the half-door
and walk in to help myself. I find the wax papers
and select several to sample..milk chocolate fudge..
chocolate mints...white fudge. As I begin to eat
the delicacies, I range forward to find the toy aisle.
It must be filled with all the toys of childhood,
especially the ones I never got to experience.
Yes, there they are, the bright displays in the
plastic colored playthings. The Give-A-Show projector
is there, in it's cardboard box. And numerous movie
reels are there, strips with color slides which you
slip through the projector. They are beside the
view masters and the reels for that. There are the
dolls; the bathing doll..the crying doll..the talking
doll, of course. And endless things for Barbies world..
cases..clothes in hanging containers made of cardboard
and cellophane, with little shoes, handbags, hair brushes,
etc. Barbie herself is also there; still in the hard body
version, before the bendable Barbies began to arrive.
In the boys toy section of course are the innumerable
little metal die-cast cars, vans, airplanes, etc.
There are bathtub toys and art supplies.
After a while, I decide to go to the lingerie section-
a place visited often with my mother when I was little.
There are all the bras, the slips, undies, pantyhose,
gowns, pajamas, robes..All smelling clean and chemical,
never worn. Then I walk back the way I came, seeing
the childrens clothing hanging neatly on racks. All my
school clothes came from this store, the first few years
of my school life (probably because they had lay-away)
My shoes came from here too. I always felt rich, getting
new clothing (for as long as it lasted). The past
begins to be hard to bear; it's hard on your body to
remain in the past for too long. You might get stuck
there, and then would have to re-live your past life, faced
with that awful deja-vu feeling every hour of every day.
And when you got to the present, it would always still
be the past by then; you could never finish your natural life
in the right time-frame. So with a feeling of melancholy,
I walk out of the doors once again, wishing I could see
the sky more clearly through the tinted glass.
If only I could find a quick way to visit my own neighborhood
just a mile or two away- I would find my parents doing
again exactly whatever they were engaged in at this same
time in the past. And myself too, doing whatever I would
have been doing. No one could see me, but I would see
all of them clearly. The house would be back as it was
in the past, it would look so alien and strange. My
dog would be alive too, and the chickens would be in the
back lot, if we had any chickens at that time. Funny
how everything becomes so fuzzy once it's gone, so that
you could never quite be sure what you would encounter
if you could actually go into a time machine, back into
your past.