Everyone wishes they could travel backwards in time, or even forwards in time. Time travel is often motivated by such thoughts as “I wish I could go back and re-live high school again”, or “Man it would be nice to go back and meet my grandfather that died when I was a baby.”, or my personal favorite, “Dude, I’d totally go back and punch Chris in his fucking face and bang his girlfriend, she was wicked hot.”

Alas, as of this moment, time travel is improbable. I say improbable, of course, because to say it is impossible would be premature, I mean, we could discover how it works in the future and then probably end civilization as we know it. Stephan Hawking would object, but Stephan Hawking is a disabled guy in a wheelchair. Fuck that guy, right? I’m kidding. He’s smarter than all of you reading this. Together. Like, as in the entire internet.

But I’ll tell you something that I would do if I had the opportunity to go back in time. I would go back to when I was a young boy, living in a small house, in a small town, with a mother, father, and sister. Every bit of common sense in me would say, “Meet yourself, meet that boy, tell him to not be a goddamn sissy boy.” Tell him that he’s better off ignoring computers, and video games, and instead play baseball, or football, or some other sport, watching wrestling, shooting guns, or whatever it was we did in the 80’s and 90’s to be cool, before Facebook and tight pants. Oh, the benefits of this would be tremendous, he might be liked in school, have more friends, date more women, probably get one pregnant in high school, start a family at age 17, learn the true meaning of Christmas, and get a job as a demolitions expert. Screw time paradoxes, right?

Nah. No thanks.

I wouldn’t go back and see myself through the window. I wouldn’t interact with that boy, or change his life, or change anything that might affect how he grew up.

See, everyone wants to travel back in time to change their lives, but one of the things about living in a linear existence, is that we don’t know what will happen next. Knowing what you have done in the past helps prepare you for the decisions you make that creates your future. Changing that past means you’d be making an entirely new set of choices that may lead to one of a thousand-million-billion possibilities. Going back and telling yourself that future-you is going to be a slacking douchebag with no friends might seem like a good idea, because you think it will change you into being a super awesome guy who likes fancy cheese and sleeping with Asian women, but for all you know, you could end up in a seedy motel missing a kidney because you made a terrible choice in this new future. Or worse, you could wind up dead in the back of an alley because you thought it’d be a good idea to walk through the city at 2am instead of getting a cab, after having six shots of bourbon to impress a lady that turned out to be a burly man’s girlfriend. So many possibilities!

Some people might be willing to take that chance. Some people might think “Hell, I have nothing to lose, no one knows I exist here, might as well go back and change it all.” and I wouldn’t blame them, but what about everyone else? Do you not believe your actions will affect other people besides you? That girl you accidentally bumped into at the club that one night in 93 when you were drunk off your ass and they were playing “Summer of 69” at your request? You never saw her again, but she remembered you. She tried to look for you that night and ended up passing out on a prominent lawyer’s lap. He escorted her home, one thing led to another, years later they marry, have kids, and she becomes a college professor. Now what if you changed the event, she didn’t bump into you, instead of looking for you, she simply went home. She went back to her barista job, eventually graduated college, and married an electrician with a drinking problem that turned deadly when he beat her with a pipe in an argument over waffles. Someone you didn’t even know, only in passing. There could be hundreds of these people, thousands maybe, if you lived past 20.

So what would I do if I went back in time?

It’s quite simple, really.

I’d go hit up some nostalgic restaurants, see a few sights, shop at some stores that are non-existent in my time, find an arcade to play games in under nightfall, hit up a hotel, and sleep in the next day before going back to my time, satisfied that I got to relive a day back in time.

What, did you think after all of that I was just going to sit in one spot the entire time, or simply go back to the present? It’s fucking time travel. Who goes back in time to seek themselves, or their family, or some terrible ex-girlfriend, when you can eat a ton of food at Ponderosa, shop at B.Dalton and Babbages so I can be a snobby hipster when I get back, and play Teenage Mutant Ninja Turles in a dimly-lit arcade all day?

Stephan Hawking is just lying to you, he knows what’s up with time travel. He’s got plans. Protip: They don’t involve you.