Time Travel

The CBC is on strike, depriving me of my favourite distraction and leaving me alone with my thoughts while commuting. I've been forced to resort to daydreams and 'what ifs' to keep myself occupied. Last week, I kept busy playing out my options if I could go back and take over my youthful body at some point in my past - to relive a portion of my youth with the wit and wisdom I've accumulated to date (not much, I admit, but more than I had at 18 or 20).

What would I do with a 'do over'? Assuming that:
1) it would be for a limited amount of time (a month would do nicely, I think. I wouldn't want to start all over again at 18 or anything - I'm pretty happy with where I am now) and
2) that the results would be permanent (i.e. with lasting consequences, nothing getting reset to the way it was originally when my time was up).

The obvious scenario, I guess, would be to go back and track down Dean before either of us made our unwise first marriages - I know where he was and it wouldn't have been that hard to manufacture a meeting or two between us. But even though it would have saved us both a lot of heartache (assuming our younger selves were as right for each other as we are now), I wouldn't do it. We have 3 much-beloved children that I am unwilling to sacrifice. The girls, of course, could never have existed if we'd met earlier, and even knowing the date and approximate time of the MonkeyChild's conception, the odds of that particular combination of sperm and egg occurring again are almost nonexistent. So the price is just too high.

Ruling out the obvious, I've come up with two good possibilities. The first would be to go back to university when I chose my major, and take the CompSci option instead of marketing. Who knew, in 1985, that computers would be so big*? Plus it would have made my systems analyst dad happy.

The second would be to dump the guy I started dating right after high school (and lost my virginity too) and seduce my biology teacher instead. I had a massive crush on Mr. C - he was cynical, sarcastic, looked like Indiana Jones sans hat, and once told another teacher, in my presence, that I was going to be gorgeous when I was older. For a shy kid with no self esteem, that was a HUGE compliment.

So I'd go back, maybe 6 months after grad, and look him up. With the benefit of hindsight, he couldn't be any worse a first lover than the actual one was. Hell, he taught biology, so it was practically his specialty, right? At least it might have spared me a decade of worrying that I was frigid.

And I wouldn't even have to feel guilty about going after a married man - rumours about him and a female student were circulating only a few years later, so it's not like he'd have been totally unwilling.


So, what would you do?

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*Well, not literally of course. But you know what I mean. And yes, of course I should have known they were going to be a major deal, but I was looking for the easy ticket and I could get 90% in marketing courses without half trying.