I do the scenery thing too. It’s worse now that I’ve moved to North Carolina and realize that it has been setttled at least 150 years longer than Indiana (where I grew up). Boggles the mind, it does.
“;Caradhras’- prounounced wrong;‘Moria’-pronounced wrong’ ‘Earendil’-pronounced totally wrong…”
I do this sometimes, but more often I daydream about waking up in the past. One of my favorite scenarios is waking up in the early 20th century when the National Hockey League is relatively new. I’m sure the players back then were good, but I’m also sure I could impress them a lot, and have a great time playing the game for a living.
I also imagine waking up at a time before television with a modern television, a VCR and a video tape. I’d need to find a viable energy source, but once that was accomplished, I’d enjoy my shock and awe presentation to the people of the time.
I can actually convince my mind on very short notice that haven’t seen a film, or ads for a film, or even if the film is being made. This way, if I see a preview for a film, it will seem like I’ve never seen it before or heard they were doing a film, and get goosebumps of excitement.
I first realized I could do this when I saw a preview for the X-Files movie while watching another movie on tape. I hadn’t seen any ads yet, though I knew they were working on the film. At first, I didn’t know exactly what the ad was for, then I had a suspicion, which prompted some excitement. As it became more certain what the ad was for, I got goosebumps.
I then rewound the tape and played it again, blanking my mind of what I’d just saw. Goosebumps of excitement once again! My mother thought I was crazy. 
Anyhoo…
Ha, odd. I do something similar. I occasionally imagine explaining how things work to a person from ancient times but from the ‘educated’ class of their time. Druids, Greek or Roman philosophers or writers… I try to reduce things to their simplest explanation, explaining how radio works and so on.
Sometimes I imagine it the other way around - I get tossed back in time and end up trying to show some ancient civilisation how to make a radio. Or explaining genetics and the germ theory of disease and things like that.
It’s all a very detailed imagining. What words would I use so that they could understand me? Of course, my imaginary civilisation would speak perfect English. It would be too complicated otherwise!
Wow…I wish I had thought of this during this thread’s lifespan.
Count me into the club of those with this kind of imagination. One of the twists I put on it is imagining I’m conversing with someone from the past, and attempting to explain some concept or another. How the internal combustion engine works, the the presidental timeline, 9/11, etc…
JHC, I do this too!!! I’m a musician, I play in a group that specializes in modern avant-garde music- most people think the majority of it is wild cacophony. I often imagine Bach or Mozart, with their extraordinary listening/perceptive(ing?) abilities- what would they make of this tangled mess? Their music was largely clean, pure and melodious and grounded in tonality.
I thought I was the only one! My friends and I often resort to discussions of “What a caveman would do or think in our present situation”.
Thought I was the only freak!
This is an old habit of mine, as well. I do it all the different permutations of it–I suddenly appear somewhere in the past, or I’m giving tours to someone in the present, sometimes with fictional instead of historical figures/places. I cover technological and cultural aspects, I tell artists how their work is/will be appreciated–I do it all.
I also frequently imagine how I would survive/what would I do if I were the last person on earth–either everyone else mysteriously disappears, or (the less pleasant scenario) in which everyone else is dead from, say, a disease. (Sure, you can live off canned goods for a few years, but what about later down the road? And would I want to live without other people? At least there would always be plenty of vintage wine around…)
I can get really worked up about it sometimes–thinking of specific wording, analogies to use, specific things in histroy I’d like to cover, whether a trip to the airport would be too much too soon, etc. I have to stop myself sometimes so I can sleep/get back to work/etc.
I wonder how common this is? Is this is part of almost everybody’s “secret life”? Is it more common among the “intellectual” types? Or just us crazy folks?
What I find interesting–if somewhat depressing–is despite all my “modern knowledge”, if I were transported to a less technologically advanced place, I would actually be quite limited in the amount of useful knowledge I could impart. The most useful thing I think I could do would be to introduce a germ-based theory of knowledge/the importance of hygiene (but it might be hard to convince people of that). Or, for very technologically primitve cultures, I could certainly introduce the wheel.
But, for example, I don’t think I could build from scratch any sort of useful system that produced and/or used electricity, nor could I build an engine of any sort. Other things are big maybes: Given people with glass-working skills, could I to get them started on making lenses for telescopes/corrective vision/etc.? Hopefully I could introduce scientific methods (like using controls in experiments) to people who did not use them. Then again, even some people today do not trust science.
One advantage(besides entertainment) to this kind of imagaining is I realize I often don’t understand things as well as I think I do, and it’s often led me to go go look something up and learn more about it. You know, ‘just in case’ I DO get whisked off somewhere someday.
Weird. Me too. Or, I imagine that I have been whisked back to Ireland during the Viking overrun, and have to make the best of it without getting burnt on the stake for not knowing enough of the “woman’s role” whilst spouting off about how we do things “in my time.”
Imagine my delight to discover that somebody wrote a whole bunch of escapist fiction about a 1940’s field nurse getting whisked back into the Jacobite risings.
Nice to know that my particular brand of abnormalcy is not so isolated.