Philadelphia Freedom and Phil Collins

I’d waited until the night before my big American History midterm to begin studying. When I did finally start, I spent most of my time sitting in the university library, blasting Phil Collins in my headphones while doodling in my textbook. In particular, I’d been embellishing John Trumbull’s 1819 iconic painting of The Signing of the Declaration of Independence with a pencil drawing of a dragon with absurdly long claws. As I was putting the finishing touches on my drawing, I felt a presence loom above me.

 

I peeled off my headphones and looked up.

 

It was a man with curly blond hair that glowed underneath the library’s fluorescent lights. He had soft, beaming blue eyes, a strong, dimpled chin, and was garbed plainly in a stark-white toga. He stared at me for a good while until—finally—a smirk crept up at a corner of his mouth.

 

“Daniel,” he said to me in a mature, unexpectedly sonorous tone. “I am the angel Gabriel. I have come down from Heaven to bring you a message.”

 

I figured this must’ve been a prank that was meant for someone else, because my name wasn’t Daniel. Nonetheless, I decided to play along.

 

“OK,” I said back to him. “What’s the message?”

 

He then let out such a radiant smile that I swear I saw a twinkle gleam off one of his canine teeth. 

 

“Your life is destined for greatness!”

 

“Alright!” I said back to him, nodding. “I like that!”

 

He just stood there staring at me for maybe 30 seconds until I finally furrowed my brow and broke the silence.

 

“…Is that all?”

 

“Nope!” he replied immediately. “I also come bearing a gift!”

 

He reached into the front of his toga and pulled out what looked like a small strip of cardboard. He handed it to me. The warmth of his body heat still lingered on it. 

 

“Was this just in your armpit?” I asked him.

 

He ignored that.

 

“To assist you on your journey to greatness I have provided you with a tool. This bookmark!”

 

“Well, thanks,” I said, “that’s awfully nice of you. I don’t often finish books in one sitting.”

 

“Ah-ah-ah!” he said, swishing an index finger side-to-side. “You didn’t ask what kind of bookmark it is.”

 

“Is there more than one kind of bookmark?” I asked sincerely.

 

“This is a magic bookmark. It helps you study history. All you do is place it in between the pages of your history textbook and voila! you’ll be instantly transported to that period of time to witness the events unfold firsthand!”

 

“Um, OK,” I said, not believing him in the slightest. This ordinary strip of cardboard I doubted would survive a week bouncing around in my backpack without getting gnarled, much less did it seem magical.

 

The man then put both fists to his hips and appeared to glare off into the distance, despite there being a concrete wall about two feet in front of his face.

 

“Daniel. You are going to become a great surgeon—one of the greatest in the world! Those deft, brilliant hands of yours will be responsible for saving countless lives. For that reason, you simply do not have time for trifling things like studying for history exams.”

 

I looked at both of my palms. 

 

“These hands,” I said. “Are you sure?”

 

“You’re darn tootin’, I’m sure” he said back to me, winking.

 

I wasn’t sure whether to be more taken aback at the winking or hearing the phrase darn tootin’.

 

At that point, I felt like the joke had run its course, so I decided to confess my true identity.

 

“Look, sir,” I said, trying to hand him back the cardboard. “My name isn’t Daniel. I’m sure there’s a Daniel somewhere in this library who needs this bookmark more than I do.”

 

But the man only narrowed his eyes at me.

 

“Ha ha ha, very funny … Daniel,” he said, sarcastically

 

“No, seriously,” I insisted. “My name isn’t Daniel.”

 

He then held out an index finger about two inches in front of my lips and said shhhh!

 

“Now, Daniel,” he continued, “just go ahead and put that bookmark in between those pages you’re studying and close it.“

 

I sighed and then just decided to resign myself to playing along. I put the bookmark into the gutter of the open pages of my textbook about the Declaration of Independence and closed it.

 

I fully expected to look back up to this man to get to whatever the punchline was going to be. But lo and behold, the next thing I knew, I was standing in front of Second Continental Congress at Independence Hall in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776. 

 

It must have been 100 degrees in that room, and it was hellishly humid. The air tasted like a thick cocktail of tobacco, sweet wood varnish, and body odor. The room was crowded with about 60 men densely packed around four long tables. They were all sitting perfectly still and quiet, staring right at me with their mouths hanging open.

 

I noticed I had my smartphone clutched in my hand, which I then nervously tucked into the front pocket of my jeans.

 

A man who could only have been Thomas Jefferson stood about 10 feet from me. He had dropped large piece of parchment onto the floor. I glanced at it and saw the words “In Congress” written on top in large block letters. I recognized that immediately as the Declaration of Independence, sans the signatures.

 

Then Jefferson glowered at me and slammed a fist against his hip.

 

“Well,” he said in a voice that seemed unexpectedly high-pitched. “Who in blazes are you?”

 

“Umm…” I said back to him. “I’m Steven, but I have a sneaking suspicion you might think I’m Daniel.”

 

“I don’t think you are anybody,” Jefferson shot back. He blinked his eyes impetuously as he scanned me up and down.

 

“And what kind of clothes are you wearing?” he continued, reaching down to recover the dropped parchment. “You look like you’re about to go to the mines!” 

 

Murmuring erupted about the room.

 

Then another familiar figure stood up from one of the packed tables and walked towards me—a man who could only have been Benjamin Franklin. He held a long tobacco pipe, which he puffed intermittently.

 

“Young man,” he said to me. “You just appeared out of nowhere. Where exactly did you come from?”

 

“Uhmmm,” I said running a rough calculation in my head. “I’d say 250 years in the future.”

 

Jefferson suddenly let out a crazed gasp and slapped his hand to his forehead. He looked upon Franklin and myself intermittently with a wide-eyed, frantic gaze.

 

“This kid has come to warn us about something, hasn’t he?” Jefferson said, huffing hysterically. “I knew this whole Independence thing was a bad idea. This just seals it!“

 

Jefferson ripped the Declaration of Independence in half and then crumpled it into a ball. He threw it on the floor by his feet. A flurry of anxious murmurs in the room erupted.

 

“So what? We pay a little more for tea!” Jefferson continued as he proceeded to pace about the room and flail his arms about. “That’s hardly worth eating our nails and laying our legs upon our necks!”

 

Franklin, still cool as a cucumber, walked up to Jefferson and lightly patted his back.

 

“Now Thomas, simmer down,” he said. “The boy hasn’t said he’s here to warn us one way or another about anything…”

 

“Well, why else would he be here?” Jefferson cried. He bit his thumb with his molars and then said sullenly “No, no, no. Revolution’s off, I’m afraid…”

 

Then suddenly the main entrance to the outside—white, double doors in back—were suddenly kicked wide open. A towering figure stood in the doorframe, backlit by blinding rays of sun. This was none other than George Washington, clad in his general’s uniform and a three-point hat.

 

“Tally-ho, you bedswervers, quisbys and lollipops,” he cried in a boisterous, sing-songy tone. “How’s that secession thingy coming? I must say, I’m getting all nicked in the bob about getting ‘round to leveling those hideous statutes of that copper-bottomed paper-skulled King George!”

 

Jefferson stood akimbo and tapped his foot while glaring at Washington.

 

“We’re not seceding anymore!” Jefferson declared. “This kid from the future told us not to.”

 

Washington then shaded his eyes with his hand and squinted at me.

 

“Him?” he said with his voice cracking. “He didn’t come to tell us that Americans in the future have lost their interest in tea... or have taken to drinking it cold…”

 

The room soon became flooded with murmurs. That was when I noticed that Washington had started to improbably twirl a corner of his three-point hat about his finger like a basketball. It occurred to me that perhaps I didn’t actually get transported to the past but rather to some bizarre theater that existed within some obscure plane of reality.

 

“Now wait,” I yelled out. The room grew immediately quiet, much to my delight. “First of all, Mr. Washington, with all due respect, my textbook specifically states that you were not present at the signing of the Declaration of Independence. So what are you doing here?”

 

Washington gave me a rather stunned look before suddenly he disappeared into a puff of smoke.

 

“And to the rest of you,” I continued. “I’m just a history student here to observe. I haven’t come from the past to deliver any messages. Carry on with your business as though I’m not here at all!”

 

It was then a shrill tone emanated from my pocket. It was the alarm I’d set on my smartphone to warn me that the library was about to close. The men in the room looked around, bewildered.

 

“What is that racket?” cried Jefferson.

 

“Perhaps a South American bird got turned around at the equator and found its way in here,” speculated Franklin, sniffing.

 

I then pulled the smartphone out of my pocket, which caused the tone to get louder, hence revealing it as the source of the noise. I fumbled around with my phone until I made it stop.

 

I then noticed Franklin was suddenly beaming at me with a mixture of reverence and fascination.

 

“Young man,” he said to me with childlike excitement. “Might I ask you what that device is?”

 

“What, this?” I said to him dumbly. “It’s my phone.”

 

Franklin blinked twice and hungrily licked his lips. “We’ll, let’s see it, then.”

 

I turned my phone around to reveal the screen to Franklin, when all of the sudden his face seemed to drain completely out of life. His eyes—which had reflected the glow of the bright LED screen—widened with what appeared to be existential dread. He lost his grip on his pipe, which dropped to the floor. 

 

“Oh my word!” he said, his voice trembling. “What is that?”

 

He quickly got on his knees and ducked his head into his arms. The other men in the room followed suit—throwing their chairs to the floor and ducking underneath the tables.

 

I thought such a reaction to the sight of futuristic technology seemed over-the-top, but then I realized they weren’t reacting to my phone at all. I turned around and saw my dinosaur doodle, manifested in the flesh as a 10-foot parcel-tongued dragon with black, 12-inch claws protruding out of small, scrawny hands.

 

“Rawr,” said the dragon as it clumsily flailed its claws about.

 

The whole room let out howls and screams and frantically adjusted their hands and chairs in pathetic attempts at shielding themselves.

 

As much as I was also taken aback at the sight of this creature of my own invention, I wasn’t so afraid. I knew very well that this doodle of mine was intended entirely for comic relief.

 

“Hey,” I said to the dragon.

 

The dragon immediately raised a claw to his chin and made an ‘o’ face. 

 

“Get out of here, ya doodle,” I said to it.

 

The dragon disappeared in a puff of smoke.

 

Franklin, still with his head buried inside his arms, looked up cautiously to verify that the creature had indeed vanished. He then stumbled back to his feet and gazed upon my smartphone, astonished.

 

“That device you wield did all of that?” he asked.

 

“Well, no,” I said. “That was a doodle...” 

 

As the other relieved men in the room got out from under the tables, I fumbled around with my phone attempting to turn it onto silent mode to prevent further interruptions, but in doing so I’d inadvertently blasted out a few seconds’ worth of Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight.”

 

“My, my, you’re just full of surprises,” Franklin said.

 

Then I saw a different man emerge from one of the crowded tables and approach me. He was John Hancock. He had the most elaborate powdered wig of anyone in that room, looking rather reminiscent of those towering beehive haircuts popular among some teenaged girls in the early 1960s.

 

He looked at me and tilted his head, which caused his heavy wig to shift slightly.

 

“What was that sound I just heard emanating from that device?” he asked me.

 

“Um,” I replied.

 

“Might I petition you, kindly, to reconjure that, sir. If it isn’t too much trouble…”

 

I didn’t often like admitting to people I often listen to Phil Collins, but I nonetheless obliged and pressed play. The room was so quiet that I could hear my heart pounding in my chest. Or perhaps that was the electronic drums that opened the song. I watched John Hancock’s eyes gradually light up as the song progressed—particularly 52 seconds in when Collins started to sing, Hancock appeared to be having a peak life moment.

 

“Why, this is the most beautiful thing I have ever heard in my life,” he declared, as the song was wrapping up.

 

“It is glorious, glorious,” agreed Franklin, grinning widely.

 

“Why, it sounds like voice of the angel Gabriel personified,” proclaimed Jefferson, throwing his arms up in the air.

 

“Well, perhaps not Gabriel…” I said quietly.

 

Hancock beamed, puffed out his chest, and turned to me with a glint in his eyes that seemed to burst like fireworks.

 

“Is this the kind of beautiful thing our fledgling little nation has to look forward to after we declare our independence from Britain? The kind of ingenuity and raw expression of the human experience that would otherwise be impossible under the tyrannical reign of King George?”

 

I could feel everyone in the room bearing down on me, anticipating some kind of definitive response. 

 

“Uhhh… Yeah,” I finally said, letting out a sort of exasperated laugh.

 

It dawned on me just then that Phil Collins was British, but I decided to withhold that detail.

 

Hancock then snapped his fingers at Jefferson.

 

“Thomas,” Hancock said. “Would you mind quickly redrafting that Declaration of Independence of yours? I’m ready to sign!”

 

“It just so happens I have a previous draft ready to go that’s exactly like the one I just ripped up,” Jefferson replied gleefully. 

 

One of the delegates eagerly walked up to hand Hancock the previous draft of the document. He moved his head side-to-side as he scanned it, which shifted about his wig in such a haphazard manner that it was a miracle it didn’t fall off.

 

“This will do just fine!” he finally said. He set it on a table and signed it using large strokes of his pen. He then looked around the room at all the delegates who were silently gaping at him.

 

“Come on, come on, queue up!” he said.

 

Then room erupted with the sounds of wooden chairs scooting against the wooden floor as they lined up to provide their signatures. 

 

That was when I noticed the room was starting to fade away. Franklin also seemed to notice—except on his end, it was I who was disappearing.

 

“Our future boy appears to be departing us!” Franklin yelled. I saw many of the other delegates turn to wave at me goodbye.

 

The next thing I knew I was back in the university library. I looked up to see the angel Gabriel still standing over me, grinning.

 

But then I blinked once and he suddenly morphed into a 60s-ish woman who I immediately recognized as one of the librarians. She was glowering at me rather coldly.

 

“The library is closed,” she said, icily. “It’s time for you to go home!”

 

“Oh, sorry,” I said to back her, sheepishly. “I guess I got a bit lost in my studies.”