September 24th, 1994 doesn’t seem that long ago. In comparison, it seems much nearer than the 30-years Marty McFly traversed from 1985 back to 1955 in “Back to the Future”. What would our kids find if Emmett “Doc” Brown let them fire up the flux capacitor and take his DeLorean for a time defying cruise to Aberdeen, South Dakota, to take a gander at their future parents on that September day in 1994?

They would most likely find their mother studiously holed-up in a quiet corner of the basement in the Williams Library on the Northern State University campus striving to attain nothing short of A’s in all of her coursework.

They would most assuredly find their father groggily pulling the red sheet from his futon to fashion a toga in preparation for the homecoming football game and the festivities that tend to follow homecoming football games. As my college roommate said, “We went to a party and a football game broke out.” So it goes.

If those meddling kids of ours tailed us long enough, they would find that both their future parents’ paths would eventually lead to The Zoo Bar that evening. The Zoo was where the paths of most college kids led for refreshments, dancing, and general shenanigans on those special occasions when refreshments, dancing, and general shenanigans were called for. Special occasions such as homecoming, and most any Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday of most any week.

Wednesday was “Mug Night” at The Zoo, where a thrifty college student could buy a 32oz plastic keepsake mug emblazoned with “The Zoo” for $5.00 that, much to the chagrin of their liver, could be refilled for $1.00 until their dollars or their frontal lobe gave out.

On that September night in question, our kids would have seen their future parents, separated by an undulating sea of college students, laughing and chatting with their perspective groups of friends. Eventually, they would see their future parents chatting with each other, eventually dancing, and eventually walking out of The Zoo into the Aberdeen night, hand-in-hand, just as they would find them once they ran wild-eyed back to Doc Brown’s DeLorean, frantically fired up the flux capacitor, and dashed back to 2024.

What those kids wouldn’t know, if that were the only day in the recesses of the past that they dare venture to, is that that September night wasn’t the first time their future parents had met. They wouldn’t know that their future dad had first noticed their future mom a few years prior to that night, but assumed she was too smart for a guy like him (a valid assumption).

They wouldn’t know that for a semester their future mom and dad sat at the same lab table in Invertebrate Zoology where their future dad faired better at making their future mom laugh than he faired on the exams. They wouldn’t know that their future mom agreed to meet their future dad at her beloved library and tutor him in algebra, because he honestly needed tutoring in algebra, and she honestly thought he was cute…and desperately needed help with algebra.

They wouldn’t know that the majority of those tutoring sessions in the library were spent talking about what their future parents wanted in life. Who they wanted to be, what they wanted to do, the places they wanted to go…all the stuff that young people with more years in front of them than behind tend to talk about.

They wouldn’t know that all of that led up to what they witnessed on September 24th, 1994, and that what their future parents wanted from life, back when they had more years in front of them than behind, is what their parents have now. Where would you go in Doc Brown’s DeLorean? Or as Doc put it, “Not where, when?”