Back in time...

I woke up to the voice of my brother. It sounded almost like him but a little different, a little younger than I last remember. I open my eyes slowly to see a pair of smaller arms and legs in front of me. The view around me was shocking but surprisingly close to heart.

"Wake up and change, you are going to be late for school."

"School?" I ask myself and I went What the Fuck? School? I look around the place to find myself in a bigger bed room with two beds side by side and a old study table. My brother was putting on his school uniform. That brown secondary school uniform, that's right, that's his secondary school uniform. I look down and realised I was smaller than I could remember myself to be. Did I lose some weight over night? Oh yes I did but that's not all, apparently I lost some height too. I don't know what was running through my mind but the next thing I did was to pull open my pants and look in between my legs.

"huh, no hair... that's weird"

I have no explanation other than it has to be a dream but everything seems too real, it feels more than a dream, more than just memories, I am seeing things from the past. I jump off my bed and hug my brother. Something that nobody does in the family back then. I miss him so much. His voice, his stare, the presence of him that always gives me the feeling that everything is going to be alright because he is there for me.

"What the hell is wrong? Are you okay? Did you have a bad dream about death again?"

That is me. I was or rather still am never good dealing with the thought of death and everyone in the family knows about it. I already started having fear of death at a very young age, I would ask my mum and brother about life after death. What about all my friends, my favourite toys and what about you guys? I will be in a state of nothingness and limbo? Time will stop and I will remember nothing? I will not remember any of you? You guys will not remember me? All the things we achieve, all the good things and all those things we had. This gives me a chill that runs down my spine every time I think about it in details, even today.

"Mummy, I don't want to die. I want all of us to be together forever."

Mummy will explain to me why we need to die. Because life is too torturing to stay alive for that long and also because we need to make space for younger bodies and improve earth. If nobody dies, there will be no space for anyone new. Words of wisdom for my mum like how she see it coming that 1 day Singapore will be overcrowded but I guess she didn't see it coming that it not thanks to our birth rate.

I stop being a baby for a moment and I pretty much guessed it that I have just travel back in time. So many questions were running through my pre-puberty brain.

How did I get here?
How am I suppose to go back?
What year is this?
Will any of my action cause butterfly effect?
Shit, I've no idea what was my action back then, how? I am kinda happy with my life in 2014 and I wouldn't wanna screw anything up.
Oh no, there is no internet and Google right?
NO SHIT! NO FACEBOOK AND TWITTER???

The year is 1993, I was in primary 3 and he was in Secondary 4 taking his O levels. I know how that ended, he didn't get the results he wanted, went to a school he didn't like it, feeling all depressed. Re-took his O levels and got into Temasek Polytechnic and that is where he met my Sister-in-law and had 3 lovely kids.

Can you imagine me telling him that I came back from future and these are my knowledge? What if I told him and he study harder and got into a better school and did not spend an extra year taking his O levels? He might not have met my Sister-in-law right? And there will be no lovely Nat, Abby and Jordan. This is the butterfly effect I am so terrified about.

I snap out of all these thoughts and move my body as if I was a 9 year old boy again. Things feels weird. I remember the number of talks we had talking about how nice it would be if we have a time machine but I was enjoying any moment of this at all. It feels almost like you had a level 70 character in Diablo 3 and next thing you know your account got wiped out and you are playing this level 9 character all over again.

I am short all over again, I am weaker but I still have my brain. I have to sit through the whole day of Primary 3 syllabus again and talking to other 9 years old. It's pretty interesting to see all my old friends that I've not seen for the last 20years and the bonus was they look like they did not change a single bit. They were just like how I remembered them. Despite that, nothing excites me. Everything in class was obvious to me and I took the chance to brush up my basic English and grammar. After a day at school I was pretty sure it's not a dream. It is too real to be one and even if it was, it has to be a nightmare.

I was still thinking hard about how I got here, what was the last thing I was doing before waking up this morning. Was I in a phonebooth? Strucked by lightning? In a hot tub? Driving really fast?

Nothing, I got nothing.

It dawn upon me that in '93, my grand mother was still alive. I went home, picked up the phone and called her. '93, phone number has no additional "6" and it's amazing I still remembers her number after almost 12 years of not able to call her or was that information from my 9 years old brain?

I wanted to visit her but only to realized I've no car and my mum wouldn't allow me to travel alone to visit my grandmother. Time in a day was really slow. I have no internet, I can't go out, I've no money to spend and I have no sex drive. Tv program starts only later in the night, Jack Neo still have his longer hair and nobody knows who Tay Ping Hui was.

I was bored and decided to list down a list of things I could do or probably do.

Since there is no Google, I mean I can be the guy who start Google right? Nope.

I'm only 9 and I'm pretty smart considering I am 9 and I can say things like an adult I could probably be a child prodigy right?

No wait. Butterfly effect... I am a sitting duck. There is really nothing I can go differently besides the point that I have to go through these motion. Even for balling, I thought I should go and train up and play some basketball or run a little bit so I will have better physical foundation but what if I got good and so good that I didn't go to my obese bath during army? I might not be able to meet any of the guys that I did. I might get posted to OCS because I am fitter, I might just die in the training during OCS right?

That's a lot of decisions and risk a 9 years old have to make...

I guess I will just embrace on the fact that my brother is still around, my mum is still young and healthy cooking all the food for us and there is no STOMP or Facebook to distract our lives.

I wonder if I could visit my wife and look at how silly she looks like at the age of 9 or any other of my friends that I only managed to meet later part of my life. But frankly how am I going to go about doing that?

So time traveling ain't exactly all exciting. How am I going to go back? What if I am never going back?

I guess I can only live through my days 1 at a time to get back to where I was... Living your life twice.. Who could have guessed that? But what if my life decides to rewind again when I hit 30 again? It will be like groundhog day the movie but it is 9 - 30 on a loop until I do something "right"?

Or is this just life after death for me where I will just keep looping my life? Is that why I have no memory of how I went back to age 9? Did I die?

Did I?