Several blogs recently have posted something they call, “A Letter to my 18-year-old Self”. It’s an interesting exercise: knowing what you know now, what would you warn your young self about; advise him/her about? I’m sure most of us have thought at one time or another – if only I had it to do over again, I would…..
But what about taking this concept to another, more global, level? Knowing what you know now, what would you do if you could go back to any moment in time and make one small change? You only have 15 minutes. Where would you go and what would you do? What would you hope to accomplish with this action?
You might, for instance, want to trip Frau Hitler at the top of a staircase when she first gets pregnant. Or you might want to answer the phone instead of Watson and explain to Mr. Bell how this piece of crap is going to spiral out of control and that he should drop the whole idea and focus on the hydrofoil thing. (It wouldn’t have taken much. I understand he hated telephones). Or maybe you’d drop in on Captain Smith and explain to him exactly how an iceberg was going to ruin his career.
Or maybe not even something momentous like that. Maybe you just want to knock on Elvis’ bathroom door in time to get his bloated belly pumped so he could grow old and live to give Lisa Marie a good hiding when she comes home to announce she’s going to marry Michael Jackson. Every little effort helps to make the world a better place after all.
I think I’d like to go to that grassy knoll on November 23rd, 1963 and bring a few cops along. I don’t know exactly what sort of an impact that would have, but that date and event always seem to be pinpointed as the moment when the world lost its innocence. It would be nice to try and recapture that — kind of like re-virginizing — just to see how different things might turn out.
