Unkind? Please, Rewind.

You know those moments when you’re lying in bed, reliving some mortifying moment from 25 years ago in which you inserted your foot (or some other body part) into your mouth (or some other orifice)?

The slick-looking, ginger-haired man turned his head here and gave a little wink.

Unkind, Please Rewind can fix that in a jiffy. All you need to do is come down to our local store front, pay your $99.99, and we’ll enter the time and date of your faux pas into our nifty little highly safe device.

Go back to that bad date, the dinner party, the fight you had with your boss or your ex and fix whatever went haywire. Ease your troubled mind so that cringe moments from your yesteryear won’t keep you up at night any longer.

Our patented invention assures you that what you change will simply fix this one glitch, and your future sleep will be unimpeded. Nothing else will be disturbed. We’ve tested every possible scenario.

Very quickly, tiny words flickered on the screen voiced by an alternate announcer who seemed to be talking on speed:

May cause unintended consequences. Management cannot be held accountable for future unforeseen scenarios caused by customers not specifically following the rules. Do not try Unkind if you are allergic to Unkindness.

The redhead returned:

You’ll feel better. Your friend, neighbor, former lover will feel better. It’s a win-win situation. Trust us.

Mirabelle did trust them, and she did have the $99.99 and she went to the store front that was tucked between a sad-looking laundromat and a convenience store. The parking lot was half-empty. There were pigeons by the planter. An “open” sign blinked seductively, although the “o” was burned out. The shades were drawn.

Inside, the air was cool and smelled slightly like ham. There was a small table next to an ugly orange chaise lounge.

Mirabelle sat at the table and filled out the form explaining that she had said something she regretted at a birthday party for herself, and she had never been able to forget what had happened. The only item to use to write was a chewed-on looking pencil.

A blond man with the blue spectacles nodded sympathetically. There was a piece of tape holding the bridge together. He had a slight stutter when he spoke. “Happens to us all, dear. You won’t believe how nice you’ll sleep afterwards. Why there was this time I inadvertently made a sexual innuendo at a high tea, and I didn’t sleep for years…” There were pages of fine print to read, and the man gave her incredibly specific instructions on sticking to the script.

Mirabelle paid the money, then was seated on the sticky lounge and told to lie back and relax. She watched as the gentleman programmed the date and time into something akin to an old-fashioned VCR, and then hooked Mirabelle up to some simple wires that adhered with adhesive patches.

In what felt like a blink, Mirabelle was at that restaurant on Melrose, sitting at a table with her mother and the loser who has been her fiance at the time. The simulation—if that was the correct term—was incredibly accurate. Mirabelle was wearing a striped-black miniskirt with suspenders. God, she’d loved this look. So 1990s. So chic. She had on a pair of scarlet, patent-leather Mary Janes, and her stockings were adorned with twee little polka dots. Her mom appeared mildly tipsy—due to champagne to celebrate Mirabelle’s 21st—and said to Mira’s beau something that let him know Mirabelle had told her a secret. Mirabelle almost missed her cue because she was staring at her pre-facelift mom, remembering what he mother had looked like back in the day.

But then she clicked back to the conversation.

This was great. Mirabelle took the moment to have a bite of her salmon with rosemary. The salad at the side was piled high in a cone the way 1990’s chefs did. Adding height to everything. Jason glanced from her mother to Mirabelle to her mother to Mirabelle again. Damn, what had she seen in this man? He was wearing a bright violet blazer and he had a goofy ponytail. He hadn’t gotten the memo that the 80s had left the building.

He leaned over to Mirabelle and said the words she’d never forgotten, words that had circled her mind for three-and-a-half decades: “Mira, you just lost 10 points.”

At the time, her 21st birthday, she had cried. She had sat there feeling like she’d done something awful, and her mom had blanched. The meal had been ruined, and she had felt sick in the pit of her stomach for the next month, trying to stay on her best possible behavior. Wondering how she could get back into Jason’s good graces. The torment she’d put herself through. The agony.

Now she said calmly, “Out of a possible how many?” She lifted an asparagus spear and took a bite neatly and with pizzazz.

Jason looked surprised. Her mom took a sip of her champagne and watched enthusiastically. She’d never much liked Jason.

Her man said, “What do you mean? You lost 10 points!”

“I heard you. I wanted to know if I have a lot of points in reserve, or if I only had the 10. Do I have extra lives? Am I supposed to put another quarter in the machine? Have I gone into the negative?”

Feeling 21 was lovely. Having a 56 year old brain in a 21 year old body was exquisite. Youth, as they say…

Jason sputtered. He wasn’t accustomed to her speaking up for herself. Never accustomed to her talking back to him. He was older! He was wise! 56-year old Mirabelle in her 21-year old body thought, “He’s 28.” She wanted to say it aloud, so she did.

“Dude, you’re 28. You’re a rich mama’s boy. Everything in your world has been handed to you. You don’t know anything about anything. So, how many points did I start with?”

“It’s just something people say.”

“It’s not!” she told him more animatedly now, because it wasn’t. She’d lived enough, and nobody else had ever said something so atrocious to her since. How could she have stayed on for another two years with this doofus?

Her mom was ordering dessert, butterscotch with extra whip. People around were watching them.

Mirabelle leaned towards Jason and said, “Yeah, I told my mom something that you had told me. And it’s not a big deal. Because people do that. Mothers and daughters. Your ‘secret’ about your friend was just garden-variety gossip. Nobody cares. You’re making a big deal out of it because you want to control me and make me feel bad on my birthday. But guess what? I grow up to be something I want to be, and my mom and I are leaving now. We’re going to go shopping for my birthday. And then I’m going to move out. I always regretted not pushing back on you. Not speaking up for myself. I’m never going to regret that again.”

She motioned to her mom who looked elated, and she said, “I’ve got a lot of gossip. We can talk while we shop.”

This was great! Maybe next she’d go to the boyfriend who always criticized her for being unable to draw her eyeliner on properly while he’d lived in a pig sty and used empty talcum bottles as ashtrays for his marijuana roaches. Or possibly the one who would break up with her on Fridays so he’d have his weekends free. Damn, did she know how to pick a string of losers.

There was a whirring sound, and Mira found herself back in the small store between the laundromat and the 7-11. A blonde woman was eyeing her suspiciously. Mira realized she was still wearing the red patent leather shoes.

The ad for the device had been right. She did feel better. She felt lighter. She felt as if she might sleep at night not thinking about how many points she’d had before losing ten.

“You were supposed to apologize!” The woman sounded aghast.

“I was?”

The room didn’t smell so stale anymore. There was a scent of sugar in the air.

“Yeah, that’s what people do. They apologize for being hurtful or insensitive or making a fool out of themselves. And then they sleep better. Didn’t you read the fine print?” The woman was wearing a pair of spectacles but there was no tape on the bridge.

She grabbed the packet Mirabelle had signed and started reading things off to her. Bullet points. She had a small stammer.

“I’m not sorry,” Mira interrupted. “I wanted to be not sorry earlier.” She looked harder at the woman and noticed her lenses were more suited for her face, which had fewer lines. She turned to look around the room and noticed the carpet was a royal blue instead of industrial grey and there were pictures on the walls. Had she just not noticed before?

The lounge itself wasn’t a hideous orange any longer. It was a positively perfect shade of peppermint, and it was no longer sticky.

“But you might have changed something!” the time clerk insisted. Mirabelle wondered where the man had gone. Maybe he was on his break.

Mira shrugged and pulled the adhesive off her temples and wrists. “God, I really fricking hope so.”

She walked out of the store front, and noted the peacocks strolling past her. There was a charming French restaurant where the convenience store had been, and the other wasn’t a laundromat any longer. It was a chic boutique, the window filled with clothes that Mirabelle would look terrific in. She looked around and saw a woman getting into a fancy sports car, and another sitting on a bench reading a novel.

Where was her car? There was a car that looked like hers, but it was a slightly newer version in a prettier color. She tried the key, and it worked. Shrugging, she tried to figure out what was different as she drove down the street, and it hit her when she saw a female bus driver, a lady directing traffic, a crew of all-women road workers wearing snazzy outfits in pale lilac.

Where were all the men?

She continued on her route. Women to the left. Women to the right. Had standing up to Jason altered the course of the entire human experience?

Maybe, she thought, making a left onto the grand thoroughfare, now lined with cherry trees instead of billboards, they’d lost 10 points.