[ul]
[li]How would you do it?[/li][li]Would you remember enough details to really be helpful?[/li][li]Who would believe you?[/li][li]How do you explain that you know these things, with out getting arrested?[/li][/ul]
Yes, that too. In particular, I would tip the police off about one particular Norwegian lunatic. Or maybe just go to his house and preemptively kill the asshole, although I know I shouldn’t think along those lines.
Sensitive dependence on initial conditions, that essential phrase that emerged from chaos theory. You change a few things early, and they cause cascades of subsequent changes. Are the shootings at Aurora and Newtown in 2012 sufficiently robust that they will still occur the way they did then, if I monkey around with events back in 2010? I have no idea.
Delete certain Gmail records.
In October of 2010 I adopted a dog, my first ever. Two months later, sixty five days, she was dead. I let her off the leash to chase a squirrel and she ran across the park, into the street, and a car hit her.
If I could do it over I’d never have let her off the leash. But then, I wouldn’t have adopted my current dog, whom I love with all my heart.
Well, first off, I’m stunned that my boss is going to screw me over. I never would have imagined that. So now I’ll take that promotion I think won’t work and make it work.
Second, I will not take my 19 year old cat to the vet the day I know the end is near. I will keep her home with me and not let her die alone.
Those are the only two things that I’d change. I’d be happier at work and my heart wouldn’t hurt when I think of my beloved Jayce.
Hmm… interesting timing. I’d probably wake up a little pissed that after having had the vision of being accepted to Odyssey, and doing all the prep work, I don’t actually get to go just yet! But…
- I’d try to remember some of the stories I wrote in the vision and write them out again, including the one that got me into Odyssey, and apply again EVERY YEAR until I’m accepted again.
- Would probably push the Holly Lisle courses earlier, assuming that I don’t remember every detail of what I’ve learned well enough that I don’t need to pay for the lessons and the community again.
- Probably make a doctor’s appointment (keep putting that off,) and look into some dating opportunities that don’t just roll around once a year. Sigh.
I’d stop drinking. Completely. Which I’ve done anyway, but only after enduring a great deal of pain and loss, something that I could avoid with a do-over.
I’d go to Georgia and physically restrain my business partner until he agrees to drop the project that will ruin our company (and slowly ruin our lives).
I would spend every other weekend with my grandpa. He’s going to be gone in 3 years and 3 months.
I’d spend more time with my mother, and make sure she went to the doctor regularly and took her meds. She might still be around if I’d paid more attention to that. 
I would have eaten better and actually exercised, so that I wouldn’t be starting to have the same (preventable) health problems my mother had. Also I would have taken my daughter to the orthodontist sooner, and switched my health plan to Kaiser that October instead of two years later.
I don’t remember if that was shortly after or before my car’s tires were slashed, but if it was before, I’d prevent it by moving sooner than I did or parking my car somewhere else.
I would not get back with psycho ex! I would change my cell number since at that time it was the only contact info he had for me (now he has everything!).
I would stay skinny because even though I’m losing the weight now, it would have been easier and more fun to just not gain it in the first place.
There’s a website where you can bet on the outcome of certain events, I forget what it is but I’d find out and then put a bunch of money on Obama’s reelection.
I would back up all my pictures before my laptop broke.
Just a few things off the top of my head, I’m sure there are a lot more.
The only thing I can think of is not let the asshole next door shoot our cat. Oh, and I’d probably advise my sister not to quit her job, though that situation is still in flux and may work out.
On second thought I have a MUCH better idea. I’d get with him one last time, without giving him any of my info, and immediately after that I’d change my cell number and never speak to him again. That would really fuck with him! I want to do that so bad.
Also yesterday I found a check for $3.43 from some class action lawsuit that expired a couple months ago. I would cash it. Hey, $3.43 is $3.43.
Hmm… I hate the idea of changing things, you just never know where a different path will take you.
But. Hmm… These things I would do -
After a BIG remodel, one of our dogs locked herself in the bathroom (you can nose the door open, but it naturally swings closed) and got very afraid and chewed through the supply line to the toilet flooding the house. Yep, I’d put those springs hinges on to prevent the door from swinging closed on its own. $25,000 worth of damage to all the work we had just done.
And to the contractor that put on our steel roof – “I don’t want to chance it, put on the heat tape”.
I would contact an old friend a couple of months earlier, she was going through a bad divorce that I did not know about and then her brother died out of the blue and she really needed some extra support.
I’m an artist, and for the past year or so I’ve been developing a new technique, involving a very steep learning curve. What this means is a lot of trial and error, costing a lot of time and money. Rewinding the clock to an earlier time would save me all the experimentation, and enable me to begin working on some major pieces a whole lot earlier.
This is an interesting thread.
I was thinking more in terms of major events like these than my personal life. I’ll make a list of these events that I can remember, then I have the difficult task of deciding which to allow to let people believe me, and which I can prevent. Perhaps I can use plots of movies and TV to convince people instead. Also, I remember those better. However, I think it will be very stressful recalling events, especially those that I recall wrongly. Surely announcing some events will change things, making my predictions inaccurate. Maybe the one event I can count on is the Russian meteor, but that’s rather late in the 3 years.
I would tell my father to choose a different heart surgeon. And spend as much time with him as possible, just in case that didn’t work out.
This removes the personal and creates a global responsibility. Forget Boston for a moment. ( and I mean nothing crass or cruel by that. ) Take all of the deaths in the last 3 1/2 years from all non-natural causes.
Who are we to decide which prior knowledge we are to ignore? To not disseminate? Which parents do we not reach out to when we could easily peruse the Obits and find all the kids who died of texting/drinking/drugging/racing while driving? Who do we save? Who do we not?
A responsibility crushing enough to make me, for sure, want to not know anything. If it means I have the knowledge to prevent deaths, then it is a burden I dare not bear. Imagine?
A kid is speeding down a country road. He has 4 other kids in the car, and shouldn’t have any. He’s only got a Junior License. School is out for the day. He’s distracted, horsing around and going markedly too fast for the upcoming curve in the road.
He loses control and flies straight off the road at the hairpin turn. Teenagers die, one is decapitated on impact. This teen driver survives. A town in upstate New York is cleaved in half. Some demand he serve a jail sentence for murder. Others insist lenience.
I know this will happen, so I call his parents up the day before and BEG THEM not to let him use the car at all. That he’s too young and will kill and main a car full of his friends. That parent would not only want to hang up on me, they might well want to find me and have me arrested for harassing them.
The story above, by the way, is entirely factual.
These are the burdens of knowing the future in advance. Is it worth that burden to know who will win the Kentucky Derby?
Well, yeah, but from a practical standpoint, if I woke up tomorrow and it was three and a half years ago, I could only do something about the deaths or disasters that I knew about from personal experience or had happened to notice in the news. And for me, at least, beyond major events, that doesn’t add up to much.
We don’t know we’re having a vision until it’s already over and I certainly haven’t been memorizing obituaries. And, as you said, we couldn’t do anything about most of it anyway. You really couldn’t go around proving that your vision was real or you’d end up being locked in a lab being studied or something, and without any evidence, non-crazy people wouldn’t believe you.
And maybe you could do something like call in an anonymous tip about the Newtown shooter or some of those other tragedies on the off chance that you’d be taken at all seriously, but really I don’t even remember the Newtown shooter’s name right now, and I don’t know the exact date it happened.
I guess I could call police about Ariel Castro right away and report some lie to MAYBE get them to investigate.