Imagine you were born half a century before whenever you actually were born. What would your life have been like up to your current age? (E.g., you were actually born in 1970, so in this scenario you were born in 1920, and you’re going to track your life up to 42, your current age.)
To the degree possible, bring the circumstances of your upbringing into the past - so if you grew up the middle-class daughter of an accountant, you were also the middle-class daughter of an accountant in the past. (Though, in the scenario above, maybe your accountant father loses his job during the Great Depression and your family circumstances are reduced - what happens to you then?) Think how historical, social, and cultural events would have played out on your life. To what degree is “yourself” as you know it different? What path might your life have taken?
Born in 1924, too young to enjoy the era of flappers, spend my formative years in the Great Depression, and be just right for drafting for WWII. Crap.
After that, social bad points: no real child services, less understanding of and treatment for mental illnesses like depression, painful infections without effective antibiotics (and an allergy to penicillin when it is finally widely used). Too old to be a hippie when the 60s roll around.
Social good points: if I lived through WWII, I’d have gotten to do the GI Bill and enter academia, earning my degree in mathematics when it was apparently more valuable than it is now. I’d be of the age to appreciate the Beat era, and/or get married and have a decent life of material accumulation. I’d probably subscribe to the various electronics magazines and become an early tech geek.
Born in 1920, I have probably left school at 16 in 1936 and gone to secretarial college, just as my own mother did in 1943, as so few women went to University in those days.
I then worked for a local business as a secretary - maybe for my father - and then got married and gave up my job.
Now I have teenage children and am living as a house wife, in a ‘nice’ suburb in Birmingham (UK). I used to play tennis, but when I hit 30 decided I was too old for that nonsense and instead took up bridge – much more suitable for a nice, 42 year old middle-aged woman. My day is busy as my husband comes home for lunch and expects two cooked dinners a day, with dessert. My husband disappears most weekends down the golf club. I host occasional business dinner parties, leaving the men to drink and smoke while I do the washing up. I like to indulge in the occasional glass of sherry while I do this, which my husband knows nothing about.
I have been thinking about learning to drive, and am currently persuading my husband that it would help with the children. He remains unconvinced.
Which would all be a bit of a shame, as I’m actually a university-educated graphic design consultant living with my lesbian partner in London.
Drafted for WWII. If I’d survived that and been deployed in Europe, I would’ve stayed there. If not, I probably would’ve been lynched shortly after returning to the US.
I’d have been born in 1930, and would have little memory of the worst years of the Depression. My dad would have still been an Army officer, and we would have still been stationed overseas, so I’m picturing some happy early childhood times in the American colony of the Philippines. That all turns sour come Pearl Harbor. My mother and siblings and I are evacuated to the US; dad goes off to fight the Japanese. Maybe he returns home; maybe he doesn’t.
I go to college, but it’s interrupted by the Korean War, for which I’m drafted. I survive my tour and on returning home I’m discharged from the Army. The lackadaisical approach to a career and life that I was allowed to have in my real 20s is frowned on in the 1950s, so I put on a suit and tie, marry a nice young girl, and settle down far earlier than I actually have. Over the course of the 1950s I slowly progress in a job which doesn’t make me happy, but on the other hand I start to build a nice little family. By 1962 I’ve got a couple little kids and a more or less happy life in a Levittown-like suburb somewhere on the East coast. I’m probably antsy, though, and try to get some creative or intellectual release in hobbies or book clubs. Earlier in the '50s I was cautiously interested in the Beat movement, and now in the early '60s I’m approving of the Civil Rights movement down south. I am proud to have an Irish-Catholic president, and am probably still Catholic myself, and (pre-Vatican II) am fairly conversant in Latin. Mad Men-style, I have no idea of the big changes that are about to engulf society, and will be thoroughly shocked when they happen.
My friends and neighbors are almost exclusively people like me. I won’t have traveled nearly as much as I was able to growing up in the late 20th century.
Born in Québec, in 1918. My dad was an accountant, which in those days meant that he spoke mostly English. I was educated in the very religious French-language schools. Left school at age 15, I had to go work as an auto mechanic (computer? what’s that?) to help keep the family fed through the Depression.
I was 21 when Canada entered WW2. Drafted and sent overseas. With my luck, probably died in Dieppe in 1942. A virgin, as I had no attraction to women.
I would have been born just as things were starting to get really hairy over in Germany with the rise of Hitler and the Nazis (a month or two after he got dictatorial powers).
My grandfather fought in WWII, so I think in this imagined timeline it would make sense that my dad would have gone over. That would have been pretty scary, and my early childhood would have been marked with a good bit of fear for family members stuck in Eastern Europe after the Holocaust began (I have a few family members who survived the camps and some who didn’t).
Assuming Dad came home safely, though, things would have been pretty sweet after that. He would have gotten the GI Bill and used the money to go to school or start a business (my grandfather ended up doing both), and I would have grown up in the post-WWII era prosperity boom.
The Korean War would have started when I was 17, so I might have been drafted and died while being operated on by Alan Alda.
Born in 1912 the son of a small town cop. Graduate high school just in time for the Great Depression. Drift around chasing work like a lot guys did. Eventually join the army. By the time WWII rolls around, I should be a senior noncom. Assuming I survive the war, which is not a safe assumption, I would probably remain in the service as it would be all I really knew how to do at that point. Eventually, I’d get enough years in and retire. I’d devote the remainder of my life to be an eccentric recluse and drinking.
Born in 1928 I’d have missed WWII, from combat at least, although I could have been snagged by a stray doodlebug. I would have probably have fared better in a world without computers, as my main skill is the kind of brute force calculating/algorithm crunching that computers do so well, and previously needed many teams of calm methodical people. I’d have probably been a clerk/bookkeeper/accountant.
I would have been 50 in 1962. Beatlemania was a scant few years away and I’m pretty sure I would have had about as much interest in them then as I do now for Justin Bieber, for example.
I would have been too old for the Korean war, and perhaps too old for WWII at 30ish.
I would have viewed the hippie movement in the late 60s the same way I view the Occupy movement now. I would have died during the Reagan administration and would have never known about home computers, the Internet or possibly even CDs.
That puts me right at the start of a career when the Great Depression hits. Yea.
Childhood pneumonia probably would have killed me instead of just making me sick. If I made it through that, I would have been too old to get drafted for World War Part 2. I would have been one of those reactionaries railing against the dirty hippies during the 60s instead of being one of the dirty hippies. I would miss out on Free Love, drugs, rock & roll and all the good times. If I lived as long as my father, I would have died during the Reagan years.
I would have been born in 1910…that in itself is a frightening thought. I probably would have been more ‘typical’- married young, had a housefull of kids. At 52, I would likely be a grandmother now; it would be 1962, so I would be seeing the birth of rock & roll. I like to think I would be open minded enough to like the change in music and not automatically HATE it all like my parents did.
What an interesting thing to think about! Kudos to the OP!
Born in 1927, I would probably have been just too young to fight in WWII (although I’m sure plenty of boys that age or younger did so). If I lived in London I might have been sent off to live in a safer area in the countryside. My teenage years would have been pretty austere, whatever.
The Butler Act wouldn’t come in until I was 17, so I wouldn’t have had a chance to take the 11-plus and win a place at grammar school. I’d probably have left school at 14.
I’d be in my mid-30s at the start of the 1960s, probably in a dull office-based job (like my grandfather in the real timeline) having married relatively early. (In this life, I didn’t marry until I was 31.)
Right now, if I was still alive, I’d be 85, but life-expectancy figures suggest I’d be lucky to reach that age even now, let alone being born 50 years back.
I would have spent my 20s dirt poor, at 30 seen America embroiled in a war, at 40 embroiled in another war, and at 50 emboiled in a pointless endless war. And not a hippie, but having fun hanging out with them.