IWSG February 5 question: Is there a story or book you’ve written that you wish you could change?
This year’s promise began unraveling soon after it began. In near-simultaneous calamities, massive fires raged through over 12,000 structures in two large Southern California communities, and a neurologist’s diagnosis set my hopes for a happy, healthy life on fire. (See yesterday’s posts for details if you desire.) So, those dual stories qualify for what I wish to change.
The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends was a popular American television cartoon series from the 1960s. I’m a Boomer who was a frequent watcher and huge fan, so Mr. Peabody’s Wayback Machine comes immediately to mind.
At the beginning of the cartoon segment, at the request of Mr. Peabody (“Sherman, set the Wayback machine to…”), Sherman would set the Wayback controls to a time and place of historical importance. Then Sherman and Mr. Peabody (a white bespectacled dog) walked through a door in the Wayback machine and were instantly transported there. During such visits, the historical figures and situations encountered are always distorted in some crucial way. The main focus of Mr. Peabody and Sherman’s adventures was the restoration of historical events to their proper course, albeit in a characteristically frivolous and anachronistic way. The machine later returned Mr. Peabody and Sherman to the present, although the return trip was never shown. The segment traditionally ended with a bad pun.
Since I’m an active punster and appreciator of good fun, I’ll try my best to reframe my event that transpired a month ago in more healthful and hopeful ways. But I’m struggling. Scripture repeatedly assures us that in this life, there will be troubles”, the troubles seem insurmountable in the near term and the long term.

I need more than a rainbow sign, just as California needs more rain.