If You Could Redo Your Life, What Age Would You Start?

[Ideologue]

Parents.  Shouldn't be difficult to convince them I've murdered Earth-2's younger Ideologue and replaced his mind with my own.  I think I'd be on the road by 1991 at the latest.  Yi had a good idea in some old thread about betting on presidential elections; do people also bet on party nominations?  Also, there's the stock market.

Even failing that, at one point I had about $50,000 in assets.  It may or may not be possible to prevent my mother's death so I might have that coming again.   Perhaps if I started early enough I could derail her health problems?

And failing that as well, I'd be ridiculously smart by small child and teenage standards.  I could probably get into an Ivy League school.  That's where things may get dicey, as I run into the limits of my accumulated knowledge and skills in high school and college.  Presumably I would still be learning, though, and with all the discipline of a law student, as opposed to a high school drunk, and not just regurgitating pre-loaded answers; I'd like another crack at getting math, if nothing else.  In any event, that's a third path to wealth, if the hardest.

Alternatively, as a small child again I would have a lot of time to draw.  I could be a comic artist.  That's no road to riches, but I think it'd make me happy.

[Jaron]

Might as well do the teenage years again.

[garbon]

Parents.  Shouldn't be difficult to convince them I've murdered Earth-2's younger Ideologue and replaced his mind with my own.  I think I'd be on the road by 1991 at the latest.  Yi had a good idea in some old thread about betting on presidential elections; do people also bet on party nominations?  Also, there's the stock market.

Sounds like it wouldn't be too difficult to convince them that you need a lifetime's worth of haldol.

[Siege]

Might as well do the teenage years again.

What did you do during your teenage years besides playing pc games and eating like a whale?

[Tonitrus]

Not really.  My future knowledge would make me enormously wealthy.  Also, I speak to the American people.

Where are you getting the capital to invest?

It only takes a little to start. Scrape together fifty bucks for a way out of the money call on something you know is about to explode and you're off and running.

$50 worth of Apple stock bought in 1997 would be worth about $21,799 today.  Ide could buy a Honda Accord.

[Jaron]

Might as well do the teenage years again.

What did you do during your teenage years besides playing pc games and eating like a whale?

I wouldn't want to redo them if I thought I did them right.

[garbon]

Not really.  My future knowledge would make me enormously wealthy.  Also, I speak to the American people.

Where are you getting the capital to invest?

It only takes a little to start. Scrape together fifty bucks for a way out of the money call on something you know is about to explode and you're off and running.

$50 worth of Apple stock bought in 1997 would be worth about $21,799 today.  Ide could buy a Honda Accord.

Wow, that'd be earth shattering!

[Camerus]

I think almost no one does high school right.  Or maybe it's just us Languish nerds.   

[Josquius]

8 or 9 maybe?
Avoid the banality of early childhood but early enough to try and cut off getting ill before it happens and to not believe my dad and his bollocks of you shouldn't care what other people think, you'll never be a footballer, etc....

Childhood is the yearning to reach adulthood.
Adulthood is yearning to reclaim childhood.

[DontSayBanana]

4 or 5.  S and I were actually just having this conversation a few minutes ago- she wants her childhood back out of nostalgia, and I want mine back for a do-over.

[Eddie Teach]

8 or 9 maybe?
Avoid the banality of early childhood but early enough to try and cut off getting ill before it happens and to not believe my dad and his bollocks of you shouldn't care what other people think, you'll never be a footballer, etc....

He was right about the soccer, you know.

[Josquius]

8 or 9 maybe?
Avoid the banality of early childhood but early enough to try and cut off getting ill before it happens and to not believe my dad and his bollocks of you shouldn't care what other people think, you'll never be a footballer, etc....

He was right about the soccer, you know.

He most likely was (though I was pretty awesome as a kid, played with the 11 year olds when I was 7 and all that). But that's not the kind of thing you tell a kid. Especially when it involves discouraging them from exercising, socialising, etc...

[Ideologue]

Parents.  Shouldn't be difficult to convince them I've murdered Earth-2's younger Ideologue and replaced his mind with my own.  I think I'd be on the road by 1991 at the latest.  Yi had a good idea in some old thread about betting on presidential elections; do people also bet on party nominations?  Also, there's the stock market.

Sounds like it wouldn't be too difficult to convince them that you need a lifetime's worth of haldol.

Nonsense.  Unless you know a lot of four year olds who sound like adults , let alone who know who the governor of Arkansas was, dictator of Iraq was, and who Boris fucking Yelstin was in the 1980s?

Also I could demonstrate knowledge and skills that I could not possibly have learned on my own.  E.g., speaking Spanish, writing in Cyrillic, rattling off nerd trivia, mentioning relatives I've never met, talking about tort law, and so forth.

And it's not like I have to predict world-shaking events.  I was alive during Star Trek TNG in first run.  How am I predicting how Picard gets out of that sticky situation with the Borg?  How do I know about that horribly racist episode before it airs?  How do I even know what racism is?

"Dad, can we get cable in 1989 so we can get the Comedy Channel so I can watch Mystery Science Theatre 3000?  I really like that show.  Granted, the first season's really shaky, in large part because J. Elvis Weinstein is like a fraction of the talent that Kevin Murphy is, but it's still better than the 1988 KTMA season, and it does have its charms."

The first movie I ever went to go see was Transformers: The Movie (the good one).  Optimus dies.  Megatron becomes Galvatron.  There's an amazing part where Hot Rod and Kup are tried by a kangaroo court.  Hot Rod unlocks the Matrix of leadership becomes leader of the Autobots.  How do I know that?  I'm watching it opening night.  I shouldn't even be able to read terribly well yet, and there is no .  At this point, I am four years old.

Hell, go far enough back and I'm a talking infant.  With a vocabulary of like 50,000 words.  Somewhere, Noam Chomsky's pants have become a dairy factory.

So, no, I don't just walk up to them and say "DUR I AM FROM TEH FUTURE GIMME JUICE BOX."

See, you're really not thinking this through.  I've thought it through.  Because Replay is my favorite sci-fi novel.  It speaks to me.

[Barrister]

I can't imagine anything more isolating that being a 36 year old trapped in a child's body.  Adults aren't going to be your friend - too creepy.  Other kids aren't going to have anything in common with you.

The idea of going back to childhood is compelling, but only to experience all those firsts again for the first time.  I mean I watch my kid get so enthralled, so excited by such ordinary things - our cat, a car, a ball, his shoes - and I know I must have once found the world just as thrilling, but of course that sense of innocence and newness is long since gone.

[Eddie Teach]

Ide, there'd be a good chance many events would happen differently from how you remembered them, because of ripple effects from future your insertion in the timeline.