1983-1983
In ideal conditions:
- Two objects of any mass dropped from the same height will land at the same time.
- An object in motion tends to stay in motion.
In ideal conditions:
- Megan Cauley will be born and brought home to a three-storey lake house to receive the constant care of her parents and nanny.
- Megan Cauley father, Donovan Cauley, will hold her tight, glance at the open bedroom window, and turn away.
- Megan Cauley will coo her first coherent syllables at eight months of age: “Mama.”
- Megan Cauley will learn to love squash but detest peas.
- Megan Cauley will graduate from diapers to pull-ups.
- Megan Cauley will grow bored with her Barbies and develop a fondness for her playmates’ matchbox cars.
- Megan Cauley will blow, chase, and pop bubbles.
- Megan Cauley will cordially invite a Barney doll, plush monkey, plastic giraffe, and Cocoa, the family dog, to a tea party.
- Megan Cauley will be bullied at school for her curly red hair.
- Megan Cauley will try coffee to feel like an adult.
- Megan Cauley will spit the coffee back into the cup.
- Megan Cauley will place third in the fifth grade spelling bee.
- Megan Cauley will pitch into the game-losing double in little league softball.
- Megan Cauley will arrive to classes late due to forgetting her locker combination.
- Megan Cauley will receive a three-year-old sports car as her sixteenth birthday gift.
- Megan Cauley will lose her virginity three weeks later in the back seat, the car parked to the side of a country road.
- Megan Cauley will catch her boyfriend describing sexual fantasies to another girl over text messaging.
- Megan Cauley will be accepted into a private university on the East Coast and graduate twentieth in her high school class of 450 students.
- Megan Cauley will receive untoward advances from an American History TA.
- Megan Cauley will slip and tumble down a flight of icy steps the same winter she finishes college and earns a teaching certificate.
- Megan Cauley will receive untoward advances from an eleventh-grade American History student.
- Megan Cauley will cut her hair short after noticing her first gray strand.
- Megan Cauley will marry a coworker with whom she had taken a group of seniors to see a presidential inauguration.
- Megan Cauley will move into a new house and buy two puppies: one springer spaniel and one chihuahua.
- Megan Cauley will celebrate her thirty-fifth birthday by leaving her husband, crossing the river, and moving to Kansas City.
- Megan Cauley will join a book club and begin a wine collection.
- Megan Cauley will realize pink is not her color.
- Megan Cauley will step on a scale and sigh.
- Megan Cauley will cook an excellent batch of toasted ravioli and share it with her neighbor, a divorced man of forty-seven.
- Megan Cauley will dye her hair brown.
- Megan Cauley will retire and move into an apartment with her new pet.
- Megan Cauley will teach her parakeet to greet visitors.
- Megan Cauley will stop knitting due to her arthritis.
- Megan Cauley will order a cooking appliance advertised on television.
- Megan Cauley will discover that a robber broke into her apartment during church and stole her jewelry and a box of coffee cake.
- Megan Cauley will wet her bed during a nightmare.
- Megan Cauley will compose an email to her former husband, sign it, address it, and promptly delete it.
- Megan Cauley will play her favorite Sheryl Crow album on computer and remember her best friend from elementary school.
- Megan Cauley will take regional rail from Kansas City to St. Louis, transfer onto the northbound route, and perish in the lavatory as the train barrels toward the Piasa Heights station.