Time Flies Coach

The Babysitter's Here

Words and music by Dar Williams 

Tonight was just great, she taught us the sign for peace 

Now she's made us some popcorn, we've turned out the lights 

And we're watching movies 

I don't understand and she tries to explain 

How a spaceship is riding through somebody's brain 

And there's blood and guts and . . . 

She's the best one that we've ever had

Assuming the putative singer of that song was born about 1990, she'd be be just finishing college now. It's amazing that it's taken me until last night to watch Fantastic Voyage, the movie she's singing about, since it came out when I was twelve, and I had read the story when it was first published six months earlier. In the movie, a submarine is shrunk to microscopic size and injected into a man needing delicate surgery that can only be performed from inside the brain. They have just one hour to perform the surgery and get out before returning to full size. 

At the end of the movie, the crew swims out to the eye, and are removed at the last possible second before they would have expanded, killing the patient. Except they leave the submarine behind, which presumably poses at least as much of a threat. It's like the laws of physics mean nothing to them