Replay

One day in the 5th Grade, my teacher made me stand in the hall as punishment for talking back. A girl from another class walked by and, for whatever reason, seeing her triggered this idea: What if I live to be old--like 50--and then die but wake up tomorrow as my ten year old self? That thought would return to me at least once a week for the next 20 years or so whenever I found myself bored enough to daydream.

It's an idea that I immediately tried to write as a book, but the problem with being 10 is that your idea of what 50 will look like is pretty vague. I tried again in high school and college to no luck. By then I was experienced enough to perhaps appeal to young adults, but my writing was so bad that even after taking a prose course as an elective, I still sucked. My professor felt compelled to tell me that although I got a C in the course, it was merely due to the fact that it was the lowest he could give me because I turned in all the assignments.

My last attempt at this story was sometime in 2008. I'm sure I have copies of it on a hard drive somewhere. My character who bears an eerie similarity to me in terms of looks, personality, height and name wakes up in 1987 in his five year old body. He has complete recollection of everything that happens over the next 21 years and conspires to get rich through gambling on sports events and using those winnings to buy all of the hot stocks of the 80s and 90s.

The big reveal in my story was going to be that every time he got back to his original time, he'd die and wake back up as a five year old. It would become something of a curse to him. Now, in hindsight I realize that I was ripping off a series of movies like Groundhog Day, but when that initial idea came to me back in '92, it was a truly unique idea...or so I thought.

I just spent the last eight hours reading a novel called Replay by Ken Underwood from cover to cover. Earlier in the day I thought about my story and my fascination with time travel and googled great time travel books. It was repeated on all of the lists that I found on various sites. I had to go to the library to drop off a book anyway, so I just picked it up. I didn't read the synopsis or have a clue what it was about.

I read the first few pages and my mouth dropped. It was my unique idea. The author stole an idea that I came up with 21 years ago. I always worried that if I waited too long to finish my book, however crappy the writing was, that someone would come along and do the same thing. I checked the front of the book to see just how recently I'd been ripped off.

1987.

So if I'm correct...this man stole my idea five years before I conceived it, and I'm supposed to believe it's just a coincidence that the same year he stole it is the magic year of my story. Seriously though, I was really shocked. There's nothing new under the sun, but a lot of the events and character actions in the book occur just as they did in mine. To be fair, it's now one of my favorite books and he wrote it better than anything I had in mind. Still...it's weird to find out your brainchild was conceived and birthed years before you ever thought of it.