Where Are You, Past Dave?

Our boss discovered a treasure trove of old photos in the English office; they were from 1999 and they were comprehensive in content: shots of us teaching, drinking at the bar, participating in the charity fashion show, an amazing tableau of the entire department in grungy teenage clothes at the smoker's gate, some photos of me fishing and smoking a cigar, etc. etc. -- and Stacey took a look at the 1999 version of Dave, skinny with a full head of hair -- and she said, "Things might have been different if I was around Dave back then" and our boss said, "Are you hitting on Dave?" and Stacey said, "No, I'm hitting on Past Dave," and I'm not sure whether to consider this a temporally contingent compliment or a barely veiled insult about Present Dave, but whatever it is, it doesn't make me all that happy about what the passage of time has done to the concept of Dave (of course, Past Dave had other problems, which we won't go into, but -- nostalgically speaking -- it's fun to envision Present Dave's brain under Past Dave's full head of hair).