5. Walking Distance

While driving his car in the countryside on a summer afternoon circa 1955, 36-year-old New York advertising executive Martin Sloan stops to have his car serviced at a gas station within walking distance of Homewood, his hometown. After walking into town, he sees that it apparently has not changed since he was a boy. He visits the drugstore, and he is confused when he finds out that ice cream sodas are still only 10 cents.

Martin walks to the town park, where he is startled to see himself as a young boy, carving his name into the bandstand, exactly as he remembers doing. Martin approaches, resulting in preteen Martin becoming scared, believing himself to be in trouble, and he runs away. Following his younger self home, he meets his parents as they were in his childhood, but he is turned away. He sees the next door neighbor, a teen boy working on his brand new roadster; Martin soon discovers that it is the year 1934. In a rare moment in The Twilight Zone, Serling has an additional voice-over narration halfway through the episode, just after the station break:

Confused and worried, Martin wanders around town and ends up at his former home again later that evening, where he again tries to convince his parents who he is by showing his identification, but he is slapped by his mother and rejected.

Martin wanders back to the park and finds his preteen self on a carousel. His advances again frighten young Martin, who falls off the merry-go-round and injures his leg. Simultaneously, adult Martin experiences excruciating pain in his leg due to the effect of the injury propagating through time to his adult self. The carousel is stopped, and Martin tries to tell his younger self to enjoy his boyhood while it lasts.

After 11-year-old Martin is carried away, adult Martin, sitting dejectedly on the carousel, is joined by his father who tells him young Martin will be all right, but will have a limp. He also tells him that having seen money with future dates and adult Martin's driver's license (with a 1960 expiration date) from Martin's wallet, which he had dropped at the house during the confrontation earlier, he now believes Martin's story. Martin's father advises his son that everyone has his time and that instead of looking behind him, he should look ahead; as delightful and rewarding as he may remember childhood to be, adulthood holds its own delights and rewards.

When Martin walks back into the drugstore, he finds himself back in 1959, where ice cream sodas are now 35 cents. He discovers that he now has a limp from the carousel injury. Martin then makes his way back to the gas station where he picks up his car. He drives away, content for once to live his life in his own age group.