The First State of Being

Michael’s anxiety about the unpredictable future leads to an obsession with planning and preparation. His Y2K stash is one way in which this obsession manifests; another, even less productive manifestation is his fixation on Ridge’s sumbook. To Ridge, the sumbook is merely a history textbook, but to Michael it is a magical object containing the one thing he craves most in the world—knowledge of the future. Meanwhile, Mr. Mosley demonstrates a far more modest but ultimately more effective method of planning for the future. He saves small amounts of money in a jar, and soon he has amassed $5,000—a substantial gift, that he gives to Michael. The sumbook represents Michael’s futile desire to know everything the future holds, while the money jar represents a way to exert agency over a future that remains unknowable.

Michael wants to be (mentally) prepared for what he views as impending doom: Y2K. While he also amasses a physical stash of tools and canned goods, he quickly becomes fixated on Ridge’s sumbook, believing that the knowledge it holds is key to being prepared. If he has the answers and knows what’s coming, he won’t be surprised and can take care of his mother. While he has good intentions, Michael’s fixation with the sumbook represents his desire for easy, quick answers to his problems; he steals supplies even when he has money, and he focuses on the immediate future rather than the long game. It is only when Michael realizes that the sumbook will never give him the answers he seeks that he destroys it and is thus rewarded by Mr. Mosley’s gift.

Mr. Mosley, on the other hand, has the wisdom of experience and the bliss of ignorance. He never learns that Ridge is from the future, and so he is never aware of—or tempted by—the sumbook. Instead, he remembers the struggles of his own youth and empathizes with Michael’s present difficulties. “You just focus on being eleven,” Mr. Mosley said once, “That’s hard enough” (101). Instead of quick fixes, Mr. Mosley prepares for the reality he knows is waiting for Michael: not an apocalypse, just adulthood. Therefore, he repeats the lesson from his own mother: saving money, slowly and steadily, to help him get by on a rainy day. This money jar, which surprises Michael after Mr. Mosley’s death, represents Mr. Mosley’s slow, steady planning and preparation, and ensures Michael’s financial security: By investing that money in the Netflix IPO, Michael never has to worry about money again and can instead focus on paying his good fortune forward. In this way, the sumbook represents Michael’s dream of a quick fix, while the money jar represents the reality of scrimping and saving.

Ridge is obsessed with the year 1999, a year two centuries before his time. As he notes, so many great things were from 1999—Britney Spears, the Backstreet Boys, Fight Club (43). When he time travels, Ridge is enamored with many aspects of quotidian 1999 life—microwaves, cars, telephones—but the epitome of his fascination is the mall. The mall, therefore, symbolizes the contrasting human tendencies to idealize the unfamiliar and to become jaded and bored by the familiar.

Before Ridge returns to 2199, he declares that the one place he absolutely must visit is the mall. Ridge’s descriptions of the future imply that malls no longer exist in 2199 (the mall they visit closes in 2052). The reason is uncertain, but his perception about the past is extra idealized. For him, then, the mall is everything he dreamed of and more—a bookstore, a toy store, a food court, a photobooth, “[a] place where you can [...] find all kinds of things you didn’t know you needed” (77). For Ridge, this is a dream come true.

For the 1999 locals, however, the mall is a very different experience. Michael and Gibby grew up with malls and are very much over them. Gibby rebuts Ridge’s enthusiasm: “I’m an American teenager and I hate the mall” (120); “[I]f I wanted to see them [friends] away from school, I’d make plans with them. Plans that do not involve the mall” (121). Michael echoes these thoughts. These perspectives reflect the other aspect of the mall’s symbolism, the not-so-shiny reality. Malls are huge, consumer-capitalism focused, and can be overstimulating to the senses. Michael dreads seeing people from school there, likely due to his previous negative experiences. Thus, for Gibby and Michael, the mall symbolizes a more negative microcosm of society.

Like most things, reality is somewhere in between. Ridge might have the time of his life there, but it’s also the place where his immune system is most vulnerable to Michael’s cold. Gibby does run into a friend there, and though Michael is initially apprehensive, he, too, forges new connections at the mall with Paige. Thus, Kelly uses the mall to symbolize both idealized and jaded perceptions, while acknowledging that reality is most likely somewhere in between.