Black Hearted Space Aliens, Time Travel and Paradox: A Game

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

OK, here’s the set-up. You’re sitting around in your everyday life, as you are wont to do. “Tra la la, here I am in my everyday life,” you say. When, all of a sudden and without advance warning, Space Aliens suck your Life Essence from your puny mortal Earth person body.

What will these vile fiends do with your Life Essence? Sell you into Life Essence Slavery on Geta Prime? Use it to power their sub-space gannaglobutron? Poke it with a fork after dinner?

No. They’re gonna slap it back into your body. Only not your “Now” body. Your “Then” body. The body that was you the summer between your Sophomore and Junior years in High School. And then let you go.

Sort of like a Quantum Leap episode, only it’s you being you, not Scott Bacula being someone else. And you don’t get Dean Stockwell being all crabby.

The only catch is you can’t make the same choices. On the upside you know everything you know now. When you were a Junior in High School. Imagine that, everything you know now, you’d know then, and you can’t make the same choices over.

Think how things would all be different. Just think about it. You can share if you want.
-Rue.

2

Wow, this is great, Rue.

Well, I would certainly be a lot calmer – my temper has gone down about 1000% since then. I would have kept my first car without ever bothering to get the second or third, as all they brought me was trouble.

I really would have beaten the piss out of those uppitty assholes who always picked on me and my future wife.

I would have worked harder to save money. But only a little. :stuck_out_tongue:

I can’t say I would have tried harder in college, but depending, it might actually have worked.

I definately would have dated more. Hooooo, boy.

Well, I’m not all that old, so I think that kinda covers it.

Oh, wait! I would have found The Straight Dope many years earlier!!! :smiley:

3

Start flirting heavily. Enroll in a belly-dancing class. Look at my then body and go “Damn, I’m fine, what the hell was I thinking?” Take acting class. Take choir class. Tell a friend of mine “Whatever you do, don’t take so many drugs that you think murder is a better option than jail” Get a timer and do with homework what I do now with housework. Find any existing information I could on ADD.

At this point, my new life would probably be so different from what really happened, that I have no idea where it end up. (Maybe I’d look up a weird Canadian called Bob Kew :smiley: )

4

Do I in my spiffy ‘then’ body exist ‘then’ or ‘now’? If it’s then I’d start following sports much more closely, so that if those bastard aliens tried the trick again I’d be able to make a killing gambling.

Any way, I’m with Gorgon Heap… having been slowly morphing from socially incompetent geek to plain old geek I’d definitely be dating a whole bunch more.

Having already played weeks of Angband, Masters of Magic and Civ, I’d also take my high school free time and redirect to fit my current priorities, probably exercise a lot more and try to pick up a musical instrument.

5

Nice space aliens! This is actually one of my main fantasies in life.

I’d get a job rather than sponge off my parents for ten more years, and have money so I could ask out all those nice girls who I now know were single and lonely.

I sure as hell would not have gotten a music degree; since I would still know everything I know now, I wouldn’t need that training.

I would become an exercise fanatic and stay in the best shape possible, so as to put off the possibly-avoided diabetes.

I’d make a killing when AOL bought Netscape, and I would have invested heavily in Wizards of the Coast when they were just a puny little card game company.

6

Hah! Where do I start?

Well, first, I would have decided to lose the 30 pounds that I waited until the summer before SENIOR year to lose.

Then, I’d have gotten the balls to ask Brian Hirai out on a date. Just to see if he was really worth all the time I spent having a crush on him.

I would probably stand up to the raving lunatic that made my life miserable throughout high school. (she knows who she is, and I’ve got more choice words for her than “raving lunatic”, but since this ain’t the Pit…)

I think I would have given a little more thought to the colleges that I was looking at, and what I wanted to study. Maybe go for the course of study & school that thrilled me, rather than going for the practical Accounting degree.

Oh, and I would have been a bit more excited to learn to drive - I was a month away from 17 by the time I took the test to get my license.

7

To tell the truth, my biggest regret from my youth was being afraid of what people thought of me. So, given such a do-over, I’d relax and be happier with the “me” I was. And since I’d have liked me better, so would everyone else, and maybe I’d have had a social life. Not that I wanted to be voted “Most Popular” or anything - it just would have been nice to be at ease with the group of people that I’d known for all those years.

After all, what’s not to love?!?

8

I would tell Jenny that she couldn’t move in with my family, thus averting a nervous breakdown and a suicide attempt.

I would keep in touch with Laurie, Brian and Pat from Summer Institutes.

I would drop the drama department like a hot rock.

I would sleep more.

9

First thing I would do is dump all of my so called friends, put real effort into getting good grades in school and get a part time job after school and save enough money to invest in Microsoft and make millions (not billions a few million). Oh, and ask out that cute little red haired girl in my english class. I would also avoid going to any SCA events, I destroyed too many brain cells at those.

10

Oh, my. I get to keep all the knowledge I have now, but go back to high school? Boy, would I ever do a lot of things differently…

For starters, I would make it clear that I knew quite a bit more than my high school curriculum demanded (I was always a nerd to begin with–I was one of those people who snuck out of pep rallies to spend time at the library–and was always bored to tears in high school. Now I’ve been through 2 different university degree programs and am an even more hard-core, confirmed geekazoid.) I’d lobby even harder than I did to be allowed to graduate early. If I wasn’t allowed to leave, I would simply drop out and get my GED, since I was going to end up studying at my open-admissions state university, anyway. That would save me two miserable, wasted years in the great holding tank we call high school.

I would have tried my best to learn a trade that I could travel with, earn a reasonable wage (more than the lousy $6.00/hour I subsisted on during much of college) by doing, and that was a lot more interesting, challenging, and that got much more respect than customer service or picking and packing.

I would have realized that I wasn’t immortal and didn’t get to be young forever, so I had to take advantage of having a healthy, perfectly-functioning body while I could. I would have realized I wasn’t as ugly as I thought. I would have dressed better, dated more, and traveled. I wouldn’t have clung to the notion that my worth as a human being was determined by my SAT scores. I would have decided that I was not a total failure and that the society I was forced to deal with in high school really would have no effect whatsoever on the rest of my life. I would know better than to think there was such a thing as a Permanent Record that determined my possibilities for happiness, worth, and success in life.

I would move out of the house as soon as I could, rather than waiting until I could ship off to college.

When I got to college, I would have done a lot better in my undergrad classes and gone on to graduate school sooner (unless, of course, I found a really interesting job doing something neat, like travel writing or jewelry making.) I would have worked in a study abroad program. I would have learned more languages, taken more art classes, and spent less time floundering around, getting my head together.

I’d probably be happier, more secure, and far more successful now if all of that had happened. I wish some benificent alien would come along and zap me, already.

–Scribble, who regrets most of how she spent her time between the ages of 15 and 23.

11

Did anybody here ever read the short story by H. Beam Piper “Time and Time Again”? It has a nearly identical premise. A man of 43 is mortally wounded in battle, and with the drugs he is given to keep him out of pain, somehow or other he wakes up in his thirteen year old body, with all of his memory and knowledge intact. Once he figures out what is going on(sort of) things get interesting. Try the story, you will like it.

12

One thing: I never would have stopped seeing Stacey, and she’d probably still be alive today. :frowning:

[sub]I know I mentioned this in another thread, too. But Christmas never seems the same without her.[/sub]

13

Oh, this is way trickier than it first looks. How do I keep John Lennon from walking out of the Dakota at that time on that day? What does that change? If I change the my college plans, would I still meet Mrs. ShibbOleth and would the Olethlings[sup]TM[/sup] still get born? What if I invest in Cisco early like I wanted to (this time I would find the money!) then short the market before the crash? Perhaps I’d end up in prison on the suspicion of insider trading. Or I’d be a jerk because of all the money. Or something else would turn out just differently enough to screw up my whole life.
I’d probably stay in bed, shivering beneath the covers and waiting for Rod Serling to step in and say, “submitted for your approval…”

14

shudders violently I’d have to go through high school AGAIN?!? twitch

Ah, but wait… I get it - I have to go through high school again, but I can do it RIGHT this time. In that case, the first thing I’d say when I woke up in my school is, “Can I get a transfer?” Soon as the transfer came through, I’d go up to the asshole that tormented me since the third greade and punch his goddamned lights out. I’d go to my rat-bastard Algebra teacher, the one that never missed a chance to ridicule me in class, and tell him to go fuck himself, and why, if he’s such a great engineer, is he teaching Algebra in a backwoods Southern Appalachian town?

Then I’d apply to the State School of the Arts. I’d spend my time there learning Art technique. (I wouldn’t bother trying to work with computer graphics programs. Illustrator, Photoshop, Quark, et al in 1987 would be too antiquated for me to make good use of them.)

I’d stay with my martial arts lessons and throw in a good muscle-building routine, get myself in good shape while I’m young enough to keep at it. Then, naturally, I’d try my luck at the dating scene, sowing my oats as best as I can.

I’d try to meet some Dopers-to-be, seeing if friendships could be formed in the analog world.

(All this time I’d of course be trying my durndest to capitalize on thirteen years of future-knowledge.)

Then, once the oats were sown, I’d go to UNC instead of NC State, get into Fine Arts, instead of Design, and hook up with the once-and future Mrs. Tygr.

And it’s all happily-ever-after from there…

…if I can get people to believe me about September 11, 2001.

15

At this point in my life, this brings up an interesting question: Would you mourn for the people you love now, and would lose by going back to that year? I mean, I’d no longer know my boyfriend; my dogs wouldn’t even exist yet… but it isn’t as if anything would have happened to them. So how could you feel bad?

Anyhow, I’d put everything I could into seducing Elwood. One of those “If I’d known then what I know now” regrets from hell. I’d force my guidance counselor to give me some reasonable college choices, and explain to me what a National Merit Scholarship actually could do for me. I’d take up aikido with the body I had then… wow. I might even start a gay and lesbian support group in my old high school; once again, looking back, it’s one of the best things I could do for that place.

Have a better relationship with my family; not being out made things hard as hell. And put up with the primitive computer power of the time. Bleah.

Then… invest in MS, AOL, IBM, and Cisco. And use the proceeds to try and help prevent some of the events of the future; mass murders, wars, famines, Packard Bell.