Dude, I can tell you the score of every World Series game that’s been played since I was 14 (1985.) I know all the Super Bowls, too.
I can wait until I’m 21 to head down to Vegas and place legal bets. If you’re doubling your dough every bet, you don’t have to win too many bets to become a millionaire.
(Now, this is assuming my different actions don’t affect the time line.)
You know, you’re right. More important to stop him in the act and save their lives. Shame on me.
Curious, why do you care so much about OJ and his probably victims?
Of all the things you might be able to change, this seems like a fairly unimportant one. Are you somehow related to the victims? 
Jim
(Shrug) OJ’s famous.
You could save more lives a thousand other ways, but hey, OJ made the front page of the National Enquirer.
It’s 1984, and my dad has moved back to Texas so I’m living with my mom and psycho stepfather. Here’s what I’d do:
Find some way to squirrel away money that my mom and the psycho can’t touch, giving me a way to leave home for good when I turn 18.
Tell my dad about a car accident that’s in his future and ask him to stay home that day, even if he doesn’t believe me.
Realize that my friend Matt, who I have a major crush on, isn’t interested in being my boyfriend because he’s gay.
Look forward to the day in October the following year when I would meet my future husband in a band practice room at good ol’ Central High School.
Go ahead with my plan to go into advertising since that’s where I’ve wound up anyway and it makes me happy.
The concept of “having a lot of sex as a teenager,” in the context of this scenario, is more than a bit disturbing. For someone with the psyche of an adult to have sex with a teenager is creepy at best. I’m betting that if there was some sort of para-chronic police force that would be a fairly severe offence. Think about it (those of you who are long past the age of 21 at least) would you really want to be intimate with someone that physically and mentally immature? Likewise I can’t imagine being really close friends with any of the friends I had in high school in this situation. Again the maturity difference would really get in the way. Some of them were great friends. I just can’t imagine enjoying, on a regular basis playing, for example, D&D as run by a 15 year old. Conversation about philosophy, music, sex, art, etc all would suffer the same.
As for me, I would not go back to being 14 again if I had any power to prevent it. If it was thrust upon me, I’d probably have a serious existential crisis. I would do all within my power to get on meds… I would probably wind up playing up my bipolar symptoms, especially my mania, which is not at severe as that of many, so I could get on meds, and pray that just the lithium would be enough.(Maybe if I got it an an earlier age it would have been, who knows.) Of course, it might just mean that I would know more effective means of suicide and instead of being in a coma for 4 days at 15 I would really have died. Maybe, though I could have gotten treatment that worked and gotten my sister into treatment as well so that she would not have committed suicide latter on.
I think I need a different game for wish fulfillment fantasies.
The year- 1984.
I’d tell myself to watch out for a girl named April in about five years. No matter how strong her come-ons and gestures are, DON’T TALK TO HER! I’d also tell myself to stick with my original college plans and not venture off into some other major.
I didn’t have a lot of money, but enough that I would have told my dad to let me pour my allowance into Microsoft stock. I’d also tell my dad not to buy into the dot-com craze that’s coming in about 15 years because it will bite him in the ass when it’s all over.
I don’t know if I could do much to pre-empt the Space Shuttle disaster(s) or 9/11, and if I did, how far-reaching the effects of changing such history would be in terms of my own life, so maybe I’d better stick with stuff that only affects me directly.
Why? You’ve already ratted yourself out at least once on this board. (I saw it!) 
Besides, anybody that looks 15 years younger than they really are should be braggin!
I don’t want to go back and live the whole thing over. Just give me 48 hours.
Drop me off on the steps of my grandpa’s house about dark on a certain Friday night in September, 1957.
When I went up to the corner to meet Carlita and she started talking all that happy talk about how neat it was going to be when they moved back to Cuba, I’d be less enthusiastic. “Oh, you can come see me in Pinar del Rio at Christmas break and in the summer and we’ll have lots of fun.”
I never got there, and she never made it back to Miami. Other than that, there’s not anything I’d change about that Friday night. 
Saturday, I’d take care of business. I’d hitch rides and catch buses to every hobby shop in Miami. You could buy Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Sandy Koufax and Hank Aaron rookie baseball cards for around 10 cents each at that time. I always had ten dollars or so, from odd jobs. I figure I could have bought about 100 important baseball cards for ten dollars.
Saturday night, when Carey and I were standing in front of the building where they had the Big Dance, I wouldn’t tell him he could take that guy, “go ahead and kick his ass.” How did I know the guy had a knife?
Carey got cut open like a damn chicken and I had to ride in the ambulance with him to Jackson Hospital, 'cause nobody else knew how to contact his folks. I missed seeing Fats Domino because of that…
Sunday I wouldn’t go out and mess around like usual. I’d spend the day with my grandpa and grandma. This time I’d even listen to what they had to say, and ask questions about olden times. (God, I wish I could spend just one hour ridin’ around with my grandpa in his old truck and listenin’ to him talk.)
Sunday afternoon, right before dark, you could pick me and my two million dollars worth of baseball cards up and bring me back to the present.
Checking in yet again to say that I have been spending a truly disturbing amount of time thinking about this, reaching the following conclusions:[ol]My teenage years and after were such a colossal fuck-up that I could hardly help doing way better in a do-over even without prior knowledge of things to bet on or invest in[li]I would rather dick around fantasising like this than make any attempt to turn my current life around.[/ol][/li]
Huh boy. My 14-year-old self is already getting the fuck on with his homework instead of stressing himself out and getting into trouble for continually ducking it; working out and taking exercise to preserve and improve his youthful figure (oh to lose >100lb by magic); taking the trouble to relate to his peer-group instead of doing the usual Aspie thing of getting on perfectly well with everyone much younger and much older than himself; looking at part-time job opportunities with the long-term plan of shelling out for a FS1-E when he turns 16 and actually have some social life not dependent on parental transport or the buses; and making plans for some 25-year investment opportunities as soon as he has some money to spare in his early 20s.
Getting laid more (getting laid less would be impossible) just doesn’t feature. Dude, I’ve had sex. It’s great, but it’s not worth fretting over if you’re not getting any.
waves
well, fifteen, but only for a month and a half or so.
the thing is, I think (and I hope) adults really have their shit together in a way that I, and others of my age, don’t. I can work my butt off to get good grades (which I am.) I can get a job and save money (which I am.) I can be serious about the things I love to do (ballet and theatre, and I am.) and do my best to be nice to people (I… do my best.) and work out like a crazy hyperactive grasshopper (which I do, way past the point of normal) and diet to keep my figure (duh…) and not skip class or do drugs or start smoking or get arrested or fuck a stranger or get pregnant or waste my time worrying about boys (done and done, as of right now)
but when I’m twenty, I’ll still look back at all sorts of things and think, “I wish I had done that differently.” or be embarrassed at how immature I was or think it would have been so much easier if I could do it again. Hell, in six months I’ll probably look back at my posts from now and think, “I was such a douche. Those poor dopers, being so nice and pretending they didn’t mind having such a juvenile little girl around.”
And, although I try to pretend I know what’s what, there’s no way I can handle everything like an adult. I do my best, but… well, I’m not an adult. Things that shouldn’t bother me do and things that I should be able to just handle and move on stick in my head until I worry myself into underpants nightmares and unhealthy habits.
And I’ve gone way past rambling, so I’m going to shut up now and go somewhere else…
[QUOTE=SurrenderDorothy Hell, in six months I’ll probably look back at my posts from now and think, “I was such a douche. Those poor dopers, being so nice and pretending they didn’t mind having such a juvenile little girl around.”[/QUOTE]
I was very surprised to discover how young you are. Your writing style is very mature, and, based on it, I never would have guessed your age. I probably would have caught on that you were still in high school eventually by virtue of the content (e.g. some reference to going to high school, duh - I DO catch on to stuff eventually, honest!), but certainly not the style. I don’t think the kids (or adults) who write like kids stick around here very long.
You may look back at the content and cringe. That’s a natural part of getting older. There is a natural tendency to look back at yourself at an earlier age (How long is probably based on percentage of life lived thus far rather than years) and say to yourself “What a baby I was back when I was …”
Think of all the good that people could have been doing had they not been obsessing over the OJ trial. The trial and its outcome had a negative impact on race relations in the US. Catch him in the act, avoid the trial, and I think we’re all happier now.
Oh, I keep forgetting my wife and I are the only Americans that ignored the trial. Someone please tell me we weren’t really the only ones.
Do you really think his trial set back race relations that much?
I did not think the long term affect was that bad.
Jim
Absolutely not bother with year 12, but maybe insist on doing the exams at 14 just so I could get a free ride in school for the next few years. While there, I’d absolutely f’n deck the kids that picked on me instead of taking it. It’s not like I couldn’t have; I was bigger than them, just too scared of being a ‘bad girl’…
Use my time at school creatively. Pay more attention in French, maybe pick up a German class too, do Drama and Computing instead of pre-University courses, generally enjoy the fact that I’m simultaneously too young not to be in school and too darned smart and well-educated (thanks to the miracle of time travel) to have to work at it.
I think I’d hook up with the computer geeks and learn how to program and do all the computery stuff that fascinates me but which I can’t seem to get my head around as an adult.
Then I’d absolutely not date my first boyfriend, but I would be friends with him. Ditto second boyfriend.
I’d take dancing classes and start going to the gym while I was still young and full of energy. Set up decent habits for adulthood.
I’d probably use my by-now-more-impressive computer knowledge to good effect by getting a position on a helpdesk at a company, or maybe team up with my art-inclined cousin and making a web design company of our own. That’d be pretty cool 
I’d talk my parents out of buying that Volvo. It was a total money pit. Also, I’d try a lot harder to convince them to get divorced earlier.
I’d live at home longer and save money and would take that overseas holiday I dreamed about.
I wonder what would happen if I tried to look up future friends? Boggling concept. I also wonder, if I met my now-husband earlier than I did ‘the first time around’, would we like each other?
It’s a topic that can really hurt the brain if you put too much thought into it, this one. 
With all honesty, I think I’d
The first thing I’d do is convince my parents. It would be tough, but probably possible. There would just be way too many things I suddenly knew, not to mention that there would almost certainly be a change in my demeanor.
Then we’d get ahold of my uncle (a very smart political scientist).
Then we’d form a cabal.
Then we’d change the world.
I think you guys are way off with the sports betting. Haven’t you heard about the butterfly effect? Individual data points are irrelevant: what you want is trends. Dell and Yahoo might not make it, but something a lot like them will.
Some other ways to get rich:
-Invent Tetris, Dance Dance Revolution, Minesweeper, and Katamari Damacy
-Patent everything you can think of: Everquest and Google and EBay and the IPod and IRC and filesharing and so forth
-Write an incredible number of popular songs
-Invent Magic: The Gathering.
-Get an early start on writing internet poker software
Something else that would be useful would be to know the location of oil strikes or sunken ships. But I don’t think I know any of those, unfortunately.
A few other things to think about:
-Knowing the names of the most famous upcoming serial killers
-Knowing the names of the would-be-spouses of any of your friends and relatives who would be getting married, and how those relationships worked out
-Once you get somewhat rich, you can start doing things like starting a film studio and hiring an obscure Kiwi director named Peter Jackson, and this comic book writer guy named Joss Whedon
On a personal level, I’d be such a different person (32 year old knowledge in a 14 year old body), that it seems things would automatically work out differently, no matter what.
I like the way you think, MaxTheVool.
This does assume that my brain is still going to have whatever knowledge I had when I was fourteen, right? Because I’m going to be completely screwed in, say, math class if I don’t. (“Quadratic equation? Huh?”) Whatever I do, I’m probably going to end up changing my future completely, so I might as well go the whole hog. Let’s see…
14 years old… that puts me in 1999. I know I’m going to change schools within a year’s time, and due to the difference in the calendar, I’m going to repeat half of tenth grade. I now know that by the time anyone sees those grades, they’re no longer going to be important. So I’m going to focus on getting ahead in the courses I’ll be taking when I change schools.
First, I’m going to get a decent set of textbooks and teach myself math, biology, and chemistry. That ought to make my first year at my new school a lot less miserable. While we’re on that topic, I’m going to ask the math department if I can go straight into 300-level courses. I have the necessary grounding in Euclidian geometry, and the concepts I didn’t study are never going to come up again anyway.
I’ll take AP French Literature my first year, and pray that no-one realises that I should, by all rights, still be learning to conjugate the past tenses. I’ll see if I can get into the good graces of a French faculty member who also teaches Spanish, and persuade them to advise me in an independent accelerated Spanish program. If all goes well, I could be doing AP Spanish senior year.
Depending on the outcome of all these decisions, I may end up with completely different career aspirations (premed, perhaps?) and choose to apply to vastly different colleges, so there aren’t any future friends that I’m going to look for. Besides, if I did find them, I’d be continually stopping myself from making references to events that never happened.
On the non-academic front, if I do make the same high school friends that I did, I absolutely will not date my best friend. It isn’t going to work out, and it will not be worth the mess that will follow. Depending on how much I’m willing to meddle in other people’s lives, I might also pull his best friend aside to warn him that his first relationship is going to be nothing but trouble, and that he might as well go off to college early as he’d already planned.
Last thing - I’d persuade my parents not to sell the house when we move. The property market in that neighbourhood is going to grow like crazy in the next four years.
When travelling the world DO NOT fall a gorgeous but mixed up bloke.
Do not marry him.
Time back? Continue travelling! Seeing the world is a wonderful thing.
I’d invest in Apple, Microsoft, Chrysler, Amazon, and a half-dozen other dotcoms as their times approached, but I think I could manage to get rich an entirely different way.
I would be back in the late seventies with an expert knowledge of 2006’s computing world. There are at least a dozen inventions, discoveries, and even mathematical proofs that I know, but weren’t known then. Some of which, especially in fields like cryptography, would make me very, very, valuable to the right people.
While I haven’t come up with detailed plans, I’m also pretty sure that “future tech” could make me very successful at criminal enterprises, too. “Phishing” and other cons net criminals big money even NOW, imagine a less-prepared world. Counterfeiting as soon as inkjet technology allowed would also give you a few years before everyone got wise to it. If I knew ahead of time that this would happen, I could also read up on successful unsolved crimes and how they were accomplished, and just do 'em a few days earlier.
Uh…I mean I’d stop wars and save people and stuff. Yeah, that’s it.