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didn’t count, as he hadn’t actually seen me. This first time was going to be for real.
    We were within inches of each other. He smiled. I smiled. He started to stand like an old fashioned gentleman and began to speak. Suddenly, my plate of spaghetti launched itself into the air coming to rest on his luscious hair, his tight white T-shirt, and his lap (which I feel would be inappropriate to describe.) As I tried to catch the plate, I dropped my tray and my purse. The Diet Dr. Pepper joined its coconspirator the spaghetti on his lap. My purse spilled across the floor. And, oh yes, a big fat super absorbent tampon rolled right to his foot.
    Death, where are you when so strongly desired?
    Like a fool I stood there gaping, while the entire cafeteria thundered with applause.
    I needed to do something, anything to fix this horrendous mess. I grabbed a handful of napkins and started to wipe spaghetti off of the poor food-drenched hunk not realizing until too late that I was trying to rub spots off of his crotch. I looked up from my task and our eyes met again. It wasn’t the romantic across the room eye contact of love at first sight like before. Rather I saw perfect green eyes filled with humor and a slight bit of terror. What couldn’t have ever gotten worse just had. I dropped to the floor groping around for my purse and belongings. A spaghetti covered Mr. Gorgeous bent to help me pick up my things, reaching the tampon first.
    It just couldn’t happen that way. Our first ever meeting could not include me rubbing his privates and him handing me a tampon, especially a super absorbent one. The first thing my hand touched from my purse spillage was the stupid pink eraser Crazy Aunt Charlotte had given me weeks before that I had thrown in the bottom of my purse and forgotten. Just as he reached the god forsaken sanitary product, with tears in my eyes, I picked up the ridiculous eraser and said, “I wish, I really, really wish, I could do this over.”
    Instantly I was back in the food line.
    What the . . .? I looked around. Mr. Gorgeous Of The Granny Panty Fiasco Now Spaghetti Crotch Incident was still sitting at his table in a clean white T-shirt. Stina was still at her table with the popular crowd, a seat still vacant for me. What could possibly have happened? Had the moment been so utterly humiliating that I had mentally snapped? Was this how crazy started? Did it begin at a point in time when the mind could no longer handle the hopelessness of the situation?
    No one seemed aware that anything earth shattering had happened except me. Had I become as deranged as my Crazy Aunt Charlotte? Crazy Aunt Charlotte. Stupid Pink Eraser. It couldn’t be. I looked down. The eraser was still in my hand. It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t have happened.
    I stood there like a goob for a full minute. There couldn’t be such a thing as a do-over. I had studied physics in high school. I never understood much of it, but I knew that what had just happened was impossible.
    Yet, there I stood in the same place I had been five minutes before. I stood and stared longer. I had to get a grip. I hoped I wasn’t drooling all over myself. It was a dream. That was it. I’d just play along and then I’d wake up.
    Okay. Time to wake up. I pinched myself.
    The guy across from me looked at me like I was mental. Oh wait. I was mental. I thought I had reversed time. I had to keep it together for a while longer.
    As normal life went ahead in the crowded cafeteria, a debate on the level of Lincoln versus Douglas was going on in my poor brain. Either I was as loca as Crazy Aunt Charlotte or I really did have a magic eraser. Which just couldn’t be. Or could it? Had the big pink eraser worked? Was Crazy Aunt Charlotte not bonkers after all?
    All my poor befuddled mind could comprehend was that the impossible had become possible. Time had started over. Life really was giving me a do-over.
    In my peripheral vision I saw La-ah entering the cafeteria. As I