Being in two places at once

A good friend who is editor of a particular magazine I write for sent me a nice note a couple years back when I said I had a real conflict and couldn’t make it to an important event. “Well, Dave, I’ve yet to meet anyone who can be in two places at once,” he said. I guess that’s true.

It had been my wife Mary Kay’s birthday, one of the “big’ ones,” that same evening. No contest. By then, I had learned my lesson. But years before that, I hadn’t. I had accepted a guest-speaking gig at an event held on Feb. 14. That date was vaguely familiar, somehow; I just couldn’t figure out why.

“But that’s Valentine’s Day,” Mary Kay said. “A bunch of strangers at an annual meeting is not exactly the romantic thing I had in mind.”

So, I told her I’d make up for it, and asked her if she would like to come along to this anyway. Given her lack of interest in the subject matter – “I’m really not that interested in the tensile-strength of some new synthetic rope” – come along she did, and sat cheerfully during the LONG meeting that went back and forth discussing stuff in which she had absolutely zero interest.

I was to be up last. The clock was moving VERY slowly. I leaned over to her at about Hour 3, “Sorry about this; I know you wanted to go to that place on the Essex River for Valentine’s Day. Maybe we should go now.”

She looked at me, her eyes wide, “WHAT?? We can’t just go, you’re the guest speaker.”

Well, I thought, I guess I can’t be in more than one place at once. It’s just not possible.

Or is it?

And then I came across this:

The night was warm and inviting, and the stars shone in all their tropical brilliance. Captain John S. S. Phillips was in a dark corner of the bridge quietly pulling on a cigar with all the contentment that comes to a sailor when he knows the voyage is half completed.

His ship, the passenger steamer SS Warrimoo, was quietly knifing her way through the waters of the mid-Pacific on her way from Vancouver to Australia. The navigator had just finished working out a star fix and brought Captain Phillips the results. The Warrimoo’s position was spotted at about Latitude 0-30’ North and longitude 179º 30’ West. The date was Dec. 30, 1899. First Mate Dayton broke in. “Captain, do you know what this means? We’re only a few miles from the intersection of the Equator and the International Date Line.”

Captain Phillips knew exactly what it meant, and he was prankish enough to take full advantage of the opportunity for achieving the navigational freak of a lifetime. In an ordinary crossing of the date line, it is confusing enough for passengers because they lose a day, but the possibilities he had before him were sure to confound them for the rest of their lives. The Captain immediately called four more navigators to the bridge to check and double check the ship’s position every few minutes. He changed course slightly so as to bear directly on his mark. Then he carefully adjusted engine speed so that he would strike it at just the right moment.

The calm weather, the clear night and the eager cooperation of his entire crew worked successfully in his favor. At precisely midnight local time, the Warrimoo lay exactly on the equator at exactly the point where it crosses the International Date Line. The consequences of this bizarre position were many. The forward part of the ship was in the southern hemisphere and in the middle of summer. The stern was in the northern hemisphere and in the middle of winter. The date in the after part of the ship was December 30, 1899 and forward it was January 1, 1900. The ship was, therefore, not only in two different days, two different months, two different seasons and two different years, but in two different centuries – – all at the same time.

Moreover, the passengers were cheated out of a New Year’s Eve celebration and one entire day, Dec. 31, 1899,  disappeared from their lives for all time. There were compensations, however, for the people aboard the Warrimoo were undoubtedly the first to greet the new century.

So, gentle readers, if you’re interested in being two or three places at once, think to the future. Especially 984 years from now. That will be the year 3000. When the new century comes around, if you’re in the right place, you could be here. And there. And maybe somewhere else.