Anything is Possible

Do you ever think about time travel?

Every now and then I do. I don’t have a plan laid out waiting for someone to invent time travel and to tell you the truth the plan that I don’t have changes from day to day. I would stay clear of anything that made it into the history books. Those books are full of war, pestilence, disease and all sorts of unpleasant experiences. Even the fun things are not as fun as what has been reported. You might think that Woodstock would be interesting to see with all of the music, peace and free love, but I kind of doubt it. I was at Watkins Glen Concert that had 600,000 people and had a thoroughly unpleasant time. I didn’t even get close enough to the stage to hear any music. Time travel is one of those “be careful what you wish for” things.

The only historical figure I would really like to see is a certain Hebrew carpenter that lived a couple of thousand years ago. I would love to get a table, turned bowl, plate or possibly a foot stool to take home with me. It would be nice to go back and have lunch at a lunch counter in the summer of 1955 having burger, fries and a coke for less than a dollar. I would like to go and talk to a few men that had survived the war while they were happy to be alive and didn’t have too much time to think about the horrible things they saw.

We all think it would be a good idea to make some investments based on knowledge of the future. I could buy gold at $32 an ounce, or invest in some fledgling computer companies. Pretty much any blue chip stock purchased in the fifties would have made a fortune by the time the millennium came around. The drawback to that plan is that in order to make those investments you would need money. 1950’s money. You would have to get a job making 50¢ per hour, get a place to live, buy food, entertain yourself and in all probability if you were single you would get a significant other. As we all know, significant others take up a significant amount of time and money. I doubt I would have enough money to invest with the cost of living factored in.

I imagine that I would spend a good deal of time watching myself as I grew up. Not a great deal of time; it’s not cool to be arrested as a pervert who hung around playgrounds. I wonder if I could just watch while I made the mistakes that turned me into the person I am today. There are several moments when that young kid needed a kick in the ass or even just a word of advice on how people should be treated. To tell the truth, I wouldn’t listen to some old grandfather that gave me advice. I didn’t listen to anyone back then and I can’t imagine why I would change.

No, I probably wouldn’t go back to change anything, invest money or to visit any prophets. I think I might go back to breathe air that is clean and listen to a silent world. It would be nice to spend time in a world that wasn’t afraid of terrorists, toxic food, air, or water; a world that was working towards a bright future where anything is possible. In short, it would be nice to visit a world that had recently conquered evil and was busy putting the past behind them.