- Which would make me 24 in 1939 (which is when WW2 really started, Yanks). So, getting shot at.
I probably would have worked in a midwest grain silo, and died in some granular suffocation accident at age 17.
50 years earlier I would have been born in 1925 and in India. I would have been married probably at 17 or 18 if I was lucky (my mother’s family was upper-class so it’s probably the case). I would have had kids very quickly. And then I would have lived through the Partition. :eek: I would have only been…22? I think that’s right.
Considering my family was from Pakistan, we would have had to flee across the border - both sets of grandparents did it in their lives, with very young children.
I’d have been born in late 1921 to a career naval officer father and former nurse mother. Because both put a high priority on education, I probably would have gone to a religious private school, but due to finances wouldn’t have gone on to college. Instead, I’d have probably gotten some manner of job - teacher, librarian, or nurse. Maybe, just maybe, I’d have tried to make a little extra money at writing, but all the genres I so love would have been in their infancy or nonexistant.
I doubt I’d have any more luck in the romance department, and with WWII starting just after I turned 20, I’d probably still be single. I might very well have volunteered as a WAV or a WAC. Interestingly, there’s a good chance that my father would still have been serving in the Navy, instead of retiring at 40. He certainly would have stayed in after the declaration of war. My brothers, also, would have been the prime age for drafting. Who knows if any of them would have made it through?
As for my health, while I’ve certainly had my share of illnesses - some of which would be crippling or deadly back then - I believe their severity has a lot to do with the toll of modern life. I might have done just fine, maybe even significantly better than now. After all, it was a lot more difficult to get and stay fat in that long ago.
Dead within a view months assuming the same unknown infection. Otherwise rather miserable I think. No TV and no computers would make me very unhappy. Of course there was plenty of emerging technology then, so maybe I would have found other interests.
Born in 1903 to blue collar parents, too young for World War I and too old for the second one, hooray for that anyway.
I came of age during the Roaring 20s and danced and partied and bootlegged right up until the Crash when I was 26. I spend the next decade behind a shovel with “CCC” stenciled on it before getting a job as a clerk-typist for the death notices department of the US Army.
As a Gay dude, this would have not been a great time.
Homosexuality was illegal and officially considered a mental illness in the USA.
As stubborn as I am, I would either be in prison or a mental institution getting electroshock.
Or I would have cleverly moved to a more enlightened, wild and crazy Europe - probably settling in the decadent, fun city of Berlin. Of course, then there would have been that slight shift in political wind and I would have had to flee Germany - perhaps settling in the hills of Tuscany - oops, then I would have to flee Italy and relax in the south of France - damn…then I would have to flee France and…oh fuck it. No matter where I went, I would have been screwed, but not in a nice way.
I’d have been born in 1896. Assuming my parents were factory or farm workers and SAHM, I’d have never gone to college. With luck I’d have found a husband, but he’d probably have been sent off to fight in WWI. Maybe he’d have survived, maybe not.
Don’t know if I’d have had children, though, since fertility treatments of the type I had were unknown then. And of course I’d be dead by now or with luck very, very old. I did have a great-grandfather who lived to be over 100 years old, and all of my grandparents were long-lived, but 116 years old would be pushing it. Also I might have actually developed ovarian cancer and died sooner, since it would not have been caught in the borderline lesion stage.
I’m currently scheduled for cataract surgery, which I don’t think was done as routinely 50 years ago, so by now I’d probably be blind in both eyes. And of course, who knows what infectious diseases I might have gotten that modern vaccinations have prevented.
b. 1934
I’d have been getting old enough to have real memories around the time World War II was starting. I’d have been just barely too young to be drafted into the Korean War, turning 18.5 in May of 1953. I’d have had exposure to the ‘peacetime’ drafts of the late 50s, but I’d have been too old to get drafted into Vietnam. Pretty good timing on that front, all things considered.
Career and social wise, it would have been Mad Men all the way. That said - who knows if I develop remotely the same way without computers, video games, or the internet? They’re such huge influences on who I have become that it throws most of the postulation completely off the board. I’d have settled down earlier than I have in our timeline, and I’d certainly have been more well disposed towards having children. I’d have had an easier time with my career graduating into the post-war boom rather than the 2008 recession.
I would miss a lot of things about modern life, but I wouldn’t know about them, so would I really miss them? Overall it’s kind of hard to complain about a life as a middle class white male with plenty of room for education and advancement, living through the prime of one of the great extended economic booms of human history, and being born at just the right time to avoid most draft/combat issues.
Killed in infancy by meningitis.
Born in 1924 to a research scientist father, so we’d probably have weathered the Depression okay, but not great.
Pregnant at 17 years old in 1941, there’s no way I’d have been allowed to remain single. Shotgun wedding to a man in the Army. I’d probably have been a war widow with a toddler. If he survived the war, my grandfather would have gotten him a Company Job on one of the factory lines and we’d probably have a literal white picket fence until I discovered Valium and vodka. He’d beat our kid(s) “for their own good” (this based on the real life timeline and what he’s done to his other children) and I’d numb myself to try and be a better wife so he wouldn’t get so angry.
If he died in the war, my family, if they were the same people, would have helped me with my son and encouraged me to go back to school. Compared to this lifeline, I probably would have entered nursing school in my 20s instead of my 30s. This one looks pretty good, actually. I’d be working in a hospital, enjoying taking care of people and exercising what brains a woman was allowed to display in that time. I’d like my little white hat and stockings, but I’d get in trouble for crawling under beds to retrieve lost items and acting “undignified”.
I’d probably find a husband in health care (probably not a doctor, because I’m a single mother, so my status is pretty low, but maybe a paramedic* or tech), and then I’d be forced to quit to take care of my family and/or when I got pregnant with my daughter.
Then I’d die at 31 from childbed fever, if the hemorrhaging didn’t take me first. Sadly, I’d never see the hippies. 
*Oops. Forgot there were no paramedics in civilian practice back then! So, yeah, a tech, a janitor…some sort of support staff guy.
I’d have been about my grandparents’ age. Born in 1904, I’d have been too young for WWI. The combination of my age and terrible eyesight absent prescription lenses would have probably kept me out of WWII.
Being the 18 year old son of upper middle class parents in 1922 would have been far less of an automatic ticket to college, even having demonstrated the appropriate smarts, than it would be 50 years later. But let’s assume I go to college. I’d have probably been a math major, and would have probably found my way into some sort of math-geek profession. Did they have actuaries back then? The government didn’t keep a stable of statisticians back then, so my current livelihood was unavailable. The NSA didn’t exist. Maybe I’d have been an accountant - who knows. Maybe I’d have done then what I did IRL, and gotten my PhD and become an academic, but maybe I’d have stayed with it in this scenario. Hard to say.
Born in 1923, spent my formative years experiencing the Great Depression and turn of age just in time for WWII.
Assuming I survived that and returned home (I’ll say Chicago since my suburb didn’t exist in 1923 to be born in), I’ll assume my life follows the same course my grandfather’s, uncles and father’s did – work for a regional grocers company on the loading docks, get promoted up into middle management, keep my head down during the tumult of the 60s & 70s with a solid Polish Catholic ethic and put in my work weeks until I retire with a gold & ruby pin and a livable pension. I’d be pushing 90 now assuming I’m not in ground already (none of my relatives made it that far).
I’d have been born in 1925. Depending on how the hypothetical handles immigration timing, I’d have been born to a family in Warsaw (not such a hot prospect, to be honest) or recent immigrants in Baltimore. Either way, WWII is going to have a big impact on my life.
Assuming I survive the war, I might be an anonymous prole in the Eastern Bloc, or a GI returning to the states. Here I could go to college on the GI Bill, and I imagine I’d start an engineering career. I doubt I’d end up with more than an undergaduate education in this situation, but I think a career in construction or development would be pretty likely (since it’s how I started out this go-around). And somebody has to get the baby boom started!
I would have been born in Baltimore, MD in 1904 to a high school dropout father and a stay-at-home mother. I would probably have followed my father into the blue-collar world of ship-building at the Coast Guard’s Curtis Bay facility. Since I would have been 37 when WW II started for the US, and since I probably would have been married with children and working in a facility which was vital to the war effort, I would not have been drafted for the war. Based on my paternal grandfather’s lifespan rather than my fathers, I probably would have died in my early 60s. Things that I have done that my 50 years earlier self would almost certainly not have done: graduated from college, traveled to Europe, Asia and South America, lived somewhere other than Maryland, I’m sure there’s a lot more.
Born in 1928 to a university professor and housewife. Too young to be a Rosie the Riveter, but my older brothers would definitely serve in WWII. I most likely would not have gone to college. I live in a very rural area, so I probably would have married someone I met in high school and settled down become a housewife myself.
Born in 1933 in England, my Dad would have been drafted when I was 6. My mother would initially try to keep things together by working in whatever way she could, having grown up partly on a farm, probably growing most of our own food.
If my Dad survived the war, turn to page 4.
If my Dad didn’t make it, turn to page 3.
Page 3. We’d likely be moving in with my maternal Grandfather. I would spend my teens rebelling against him and my mother, who would be putting on the pressure for me to marry when I hit 18, and given few other options, I’d probably marry my first boyfriend, which would not work out well.
I might be pushed into training as a teacher or nurse, but it wouldn’t last. I’d likely be dropping out and getting involved with the rockers, or proto-hippies. If I survived til the 60s, I’d probably be a drug casualty, unless I’d had kids and managed to turn my life around for them. I’d likely be trying to live in a free love commune or something similar, and would currently be either dead or a really embarrassing grandma.
Page 4. When my Dad came back from the war, I’d be around 12. My Dad has never been massively concerned with social norms, so I’d have quite a bit more freedom, if still little money. He’d probably be happy for me to stay unmarried and take a bit more time to decide what I wanted to do. I’d be involved in feminism, and probably would become a teacher, unless I could get into a more scientific role, which, given my family’s class, would be unlikely. I’d probably marry someone, and have kids at some point.
By the time the hippies really showed up, I’d be in my mid-late thirties. Though I would have liked to get involved, I’d probably do nothing more than go to a few rebellious concerts, and listen to the odd bit of music, being a bit old and mature for that sort of thing.
By now, I’d hopefully still be fairly healthy (my family has been fairly long lived), and would be the sort of granny that means well, but, doesn’t quite get that her definition of ‘progressive’ does not match the youth of today’s.
Hrm…I’d have been born in 1916. That would have been interesting, as I’m guessing I would have been born either in Ireland or Slovenia. Perhaps Austria. But not the US. The US in the late 1800s always interested me, for some reason, and the early 1900s would have been…well, interesting as well.
As far as other countries go…I’m sure it would have been a short life full of babies. Though I’ve not had any myself in this lifetime, were I to have kept the same general health, I’d have lots of lost teeth <'cause I have them now anyway, haha> so that’s normal. I’d probably have done alright with the baby-bearing; healthy, happily pregnant women seem to run on my mom’s side, anyway. My dad’s side had more troubles, but I seem to take after my mom generally regarding feminine issues.
Beyond that, I honestly can’t imagine it. What I can imagine is my being one of those who fled to the US. I have always had that pioneering spirit, and I can’t imagine not doing what my previous generations did, which was to branch out to new areas.
I’d have been born in 1917. So I would have been 12 when the Stock Market crashed, and 24 when Pearl Harbor was bombed. If I wasn’t drafted I probably would have enlisted, so who knows…
I’d be a non-White in pre-freedom South Africa. How wonderful do you think my life would have been?