I wonder sometimes how it could have worked out if I’d had decent guidance. The prospect of living back under my mother’s glare or having to do homework again feels awfully tiring, though. And I’ve forgotten my locker combination! And my schedule. And where the classrooms are. Fuck, I can’t remember what a secant is!

I would have to fight back for my own vision of life rather than my mother’s. Now that I have the life experience to even have one. Back then I was so aware I didn’t know anything about life and the world. Would she fold, or would she go thermonuclear?

Maybe the butterfly’s wing would be a little different and there’d literally be nuclear war.

Maybe I’d be satisfied to see videos of other versions of myself in other universes and see what was possible.

Say you still get your same kids.

I know the usual answer is to buy stocks, but that seems too easy.

If you were a character in a book, you’d try to stop one of the famous disasters. Conveniently, they always remember lots of details about the famous disasters.

  • tiredofsametab@fedia.io
    7·
    22 days ago

    I don’t think I would. I sometimes wish I could watch some events play out again as my memory of some things gets worse, but I certainly would not want to relive it for a number of reasons.

  • reddig33@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    22 days ago

    Sometimes I wish I had a time machine just so I could take myself to concerts I missed.

    I’d also tell my parents not to move. What a fuck up that did to our lives.

    • connect@programming.devOPEnglish
      4·
      22 days ago

      Ah, moving…there was a moment in my early teens when we could have moved, and I sometimes wonder how that could have opened up my life. Of course I didn’t know our finances and had little grasp of what was going on with my mother psychologically.

  • sprack@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    22 days ago

    100% yes, even if I couldn’t change any outcomes or end up richer. Just to have a chance to see and spend more time with the people that passed away too soon. That would make it worthwhile.

  • SquiffSquiff@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    22 days ago

    This is a common thought experiment for lots of people and the break point is usually kids or maybe a partner. If I could still get the same kids (implies same partner) then absolutely. I could be a lot richer, more successful in my career and happier.

  • connect@programming.devOPEnglish
    4·
    22 days ago

    I saw a television episode on Youtube once where a guy went back because there was the girl he didn’t get when he was around 17. She had been so built up with the glow of memory, but then seeing her again with adult eyes, she was like a kid to him. Pretty girl, but someone whose memory he could move on from now.

    Maybe Back Then would be less of a nebulous, mysterious thing to think over if I had photos or video from back then. No photos or video? Must have been real horse-and-buggy days.

  • stoly@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    22 days ago

    Now that I know how things work I could just do them. They was nobody to help me learn important stuff. It was sort of “figure it out yourself”.