Who knew the future arrived in 1973? Possibly some fat kid from Des Plaines, Illinois. At ten years old I was experiencing a lot of changes. For the first time in my life, we were moving. We were moving from my beloved home in Des Plaines, IL to an older home three miles away in Des Plaines, Illinois. I was leaving the only friends and school I had ever known.

Before I was to leave the Fourth Grade at Devonshire Elementary, I had a report due. Specifically for this morning, we were to turn in our first paragraph and I still had not decided on a topic. I wasn’t too worried yet since I still had at least two hours before I had to turn it in.  There was plenty of time to write it on the bus, but I still had not decided what to write my current event on.

“Why don’t you do it on the 17 Year Locust?” my mom suggested. Hmm – bugs. I knew all about mammals, reptiles, a little about birds and fish. I was also the family expert on dinosaurs and monsters. And I was catching up to my mom on plants but I was specializing in cacti and carnivorous plants. Only Lee had entered the insect world with his butterfly collection. Maybe it was now my turn.

Luckily Mom had seen an article on these locusts in the paper. Grabbing between the scissor blades as Mom cut the article out for me, I made the bus and ignored my friends on our trip to school as I wrote out my opening paragraph for my paper.

It turned out the 17 Year Locust were not locusts at all but cicadas. They lived underground feeding off of tree roots, crawled to the surface, changed from a nymph to an adult just to mate and die in a few weeks. These particular cicadas lived underground for 17 years – this was going to be awesome!

After reading the article, I was a little confused. It said there would be millions of these cicadas and we should be ‘prepared’. But I hadn’t seen any outside. During recess, I checked the playground and the field didn’t see any. I checked bushes as we waited for the bus to take us home but nothing.

As Dave, Dawn and I ran in from the bus that afternoon, Mom called me into the kitchen. Unexpected gifts are always the best. And any gift outside of Christmas or your birthday was even better.  As I entered the kitchen Mom presented me with a glass jar of dirt.

“I was talking to Mrs. Johnson from church and she was talking about all the locusts that were coming out…”

“They’re cicadas, mom,” I interrupted.

Being used to my interruptions she continued without missing a beat, “and she said she kept digging up the grubs…”

“They’re called ‘nymphs'”, I said, interrupting again.

This interruption caused Mom’s eyebrows to lower in the middle of her face and her speech to slow, but she continued, “so she put one in the jar for me.”

My eyes widened and I grabbed the jar and shook it over my mom’s protests. Out of the jumping dirt popped the coolest bug I’d ever seen. It was a copper brown and you could tell it was built for digging. Its front two legs were like Popeye-legs that could just tear through the dirt. It moved slowing trying to right itself.

I spent an hour just staring at the nymph that eventually righted itself but it didn’t seem to want to do anything more. When Dad arrived home Mom reminded us we were going to go to the new house. I showed Dad the nymph Mrs. Johnson had given Mom to give to me and he picked up the jar. Shaking the jar the nymph moved to tell my dad he was still alive.

“Are they any cicadas at the new house?” I asked.

“Ton’s,”  Dad said. “They’re all over the place – and they are loud.”

Oh — My — God!

In those days we could sit in the back of a station wagon – seatbelts be damned. Dave, Dawn and I sat in the ‘way back’ with our arms dangling over the gate. As we drove into the new neighborhood, you could hear them – even over the car noise. I could tell Lee was just fascinated as much as I was. At a stoplight, their chorus was incredibly loud. Occasionally I would see something fly from tree to tree, or a bush or the ground but we were too far really see anything.

How many were there? I wondered. As we pulled down Rose Avenue where our new house was and Dad drove slower, it was like we were in a cave of sound and their chirping was echoing off invisible walls. I continued to look at the trees and bushes and while I would see the occasional flight of something I still could not tell what they looked like – but they were here, they were most certainly everywhere.

Dad pulled into the driveway and Dave, Dawn and I jumped out the back. They were here and they were loud. I walked over to the white picketed fence and something flew past me. It was big and it startled me. I saw it land on the other side of the fence. I walked over letting my hand bounce off the individual pickets looking for other cicadas but they didn’t swarm like flies or mosquitoes.

As I walked to a tree, I saw one. It sat on the fence and it was about the coolest thing I had ever seen. Its black body was accented with red eyes, their translucent wings were framed in orange. I reached for it grabbing it around the middle. The article said they didn’t bite but it was so big. As soon as I picked it up and tried to fly but it wasn’t going anywhere.

Picking it up, I stared into its red eyes. This was something from another planet, or so it seemed. Its legs flailed as it tried to escape my grip. When that didn’t work it ‘buzzed’ – or that is the only word I can think of to describe the sound it started making. But it wasn’t a buzz from its wings (I had those clamped against its body), I was a buzz that caused its whole body to vibrate. I was weird and fascinating.

I cupped my hands around afraid I was hurting it. If it was going to bite it was going to do it now; but it didn’t. I opened my hands when the buzzing stopped and it settled down. It sat on my hand looking at me – or so I thought. I was thinking I was bonding with this alien entity. This creature from 17 years ago freshly mottled encountering its first human. Instead, its wings lifted and flew to the other yard. The wings carrying the oversized body. It flew level at first then angled up and then I lost sight of it. My first encounter with the 17 cicada was surreal.

I continued to a tree that bordered our new yard and our new neighbors. Immediately I saw four or five nymph shells stuck to the tree. I pulled the shell off breaking its dying(?) grip.

“I found a shell!” I yelled back to everyone who was waiting for Dad to open the backdoor.

Lee was coming over to look as well as Dave. Hope and Dawn were already going inside with Mom and Dad. They didn’t seem as interested in this whole cicada discovery. I proudly held the shell out to Lee who looked at it briefly and then walked to the tree to pull off his own shell. Above us, the cicadas droned on and on like a rolling wave of sound cheering summer in.

“Don’t you guys what to check out the new house?” Dad yelled.

Dave looked at the shells on left on the tree and ran to the open door. Lee took his nymph shell and and started hunt for his own cicada. I yelled to Dad that I would be there soon and plucked another shell off the tree. I told Lee I caught one. Well, not really, more like just picking it up off the picket fence.

I held the shell on my finger and imagined the night before as it dug its way out of the ground for the first time in seventeen years. It looked like it had eyes, but did it? I could picture it slowly crawl through the grass to the trunk of the tree as it began its arduously journey over the rough bark until they were ready to molt their old skin for their new winged life, although it was a much briefer life.

Seventeen years. I wasn’t even as old as this shell. (ok, forget the fact that the nymph would have molted a number of time to get this size but at ten years old I wasn’t thinking like that.) This nymph was hatched in 1956. Wow. The next time these cicadas would come, I would 27 years old, in the year 1990. The year rolled around in my head – 1990, The Nineties. I didn’t sound as cool as The Seventies. Even the Eighties sounds ok. The Nineties.

I did some quick math – I would graduate high school in 1981. Where would I go to High School here? West Main? I think I heard that’s where Hope and Lee were going. Nineteen Ninety – would my parents still be in this house? Where would I be still live here? I would be done with school, so would I be a botanist? Would I finally move to the desert so I could be with my cacti? Or maybe I would live in North Carolina where Venus Flytraps are.

And I could drive a car. What kind of cars would they have then? What kind would I have? Flying cars would be so cool. How would they fly? Would I be married? So I would have a girlfriend? Sex? Kids? When would that happen? Would that happen?

So in 1990, would we have a colony on the moon? Would there even be a future? Would the world still be around? Will the Russians blown us by then? Will I have to fight in a war?

Honestly, I didn’t worry about the future back then, I wasn’t the worrying type. I think like most kids, I was more concerned with ‘here and now’. THE FUTURE was Star Trek. I remember watching the original series with Dad in the basement and thinking how cool space travel would be. Star Trek made THE FUTURE very clean and very fantastic. I didn’t really dream about THE FUTURE, my dreams were more about dinosaurs and giant monsters like Godzilla. And as I got more into plants, about finding carnivorous plants in the wild or cactus in the desert.

I loved numbers and I lately I had been obsessing over Roman Numerals. I would fill pages counting in Roman Numerals, which I would hid from my siblings and friends in case they teased me about it – because it was weird.

So – the cicadas would come back in MCMXC and I would be XXVII. After they would come again in MMVII and then I would be XLIV. Forty Four – I didn’t even think my parents were that old. In MM, I would be XXXVII. This was all very interesting…

The Future – was very interesting.

I remember a song I picked up on last summer and in it, we saw the future of music, in a song called ‘Popcorn‘ by Hot Butter. Besides being a tasty snack, it turned out to a fun instrumental pop song. It had this strange new sound and it was just fun. With a ‘do do do do dadu do’ we knew what song it was (or the optional clucking with your tongue – if one was so talented). The unique sound was from a new invention called a moog synthesizer.

While we had no idea how much synthesizers would change music as we got to the 80’s, we recognized it was an instrument based on computers. Popcorn was actually written by Gershon Kingsley in 1969 on his album “Music to Moog By” highlighting the potential and capabilities of the moog synthesizer.

This version was by Stan Getz who programmed the synthesizer and was the main force behind Hot Butter. Hot Butter released their version in the summer of 1972 and it was an international hit. How he programmed the moog synthesizer we didn’t know but from how we were dancing and skipping to it the end of last summer, we sure had fun with it.

The funny thing about the future is you don’t know when it arrives. A month after we were dancing around to Popcorn, Dad brought home a microwave oven. With six pairs of eyes reflected on the microwave’s door, a hot dog cooked in less then two minutes. While Mom sighed in the kitchen about a $250 machine to cook hot dogs while boiling water worked just as well. Or the trash compactor Dad bought after we moved into the new house that would pound your trash into a two foot cube to save space in the land fills (forget the fact that only Lee and Dad could carry a garbage can fill of these ‘cubes’ to the street). Or a year later when Mom saved enough trading stamps and paid an additional $50 for our first calculator. It did everything – added, subtracted, multiplied AND divided. The future was AMAZING!

Looking back now at the ten year old me and seeing the future in a time perspective, I see the future is only one thing – the unknown. The parts we find amazing could be mere glimpses of things much more transcendent.  Some parts could be dead-ends or a fad that in retrospect appear ridiculous. Others may become common-placed, ordinary and mundane until reflected upon with more insight. And some, I would learn, could be downright terrifying. The true gift of the future is in the reveal and its discovery. The current me now understands that can happen with anything. It can happen wherever you are. And it can happen with who ever you are with at that time. Which means the future is now.

“John!” Dad yelled, “are you going to check out yours and Dave’s room? We can’t stay too long.”

“Coming,” I yelled back and started to the backdoor where Dad was standing. The drone and hum of the cicada continued everywhere. I carefully held the two nymph shells in my hand and lifted them to show my dad. He smiled, patted my back and guided me into the door. I climbed the five or six wooden steps that entered a crooked porch that led to the kitchen. Before could open the kitchen door and step into our future home, Dawn swung the door and skipped out. She was clucking the Popcorn song.

I don’t know if it was because I was leaving Devonshire but my fourth grade teacher let me eat one of my final lunches in the classroom. This was so a couple friends and I could play with the cicadas I had brought from the Gray House in the classroom. I was literally bring back paper garbage bags filled with cicadas back to the old house in the hopes of colonizing our old neighborhood.

We eventually moved to the ‘Gray House’, as we ended up referring to it as. We made a number of trips between the two houses. Hope never did get used to them. When Dad awarded her the privilege of pulling out the ‘For Sale’ sign in the frontyard the day we moved, she screamed as all the nymphs poured out of the hole left in the ground from the pole. Lee and I ran over to investigate. The nymphs disbursed as they crawled to a nearby tree. Lee walked the sign to our new garage. And I looked up to our new bedroom window to see Dave grinning and waving like an idiot. Surely this couldn’t be my future; but I waved back anyways.