Theoretical Question

[JaoSming]

What would you do if you suddenly woke up from a coma and it was September of 1998? You know what you know today, but you are 10 years younger and make a full recovery in 24 hours from the hospital and are released. Would you change anything in your life? Would you see if your "dream" was real?


The first thing I would have 12 year old me do would be make a crank call to my current girlfriend so that I know if she was real or not. So at least I know that I can go down my current road again.

For sure I would make sure to protect my knees better and keep them in better health. I think I also would have gone to the same college and transferred directly to another school and not end up in the situation I am in now, that is unless me keeping my knees in shape let me advance further as an athlete and therefore change my school choice.

I would probably make bets on sports games, maybe convince my parents to get me a stock thing in my name and make money that way, knowing what trends are going on.



So what would you do?

[Jackal]

I wouldn't want to go back to 1998.

If I woke up in 1998 and had to go through all of this again given my family wouldn't believe me about 2008, I would probably just quit. Once was more than enough, no more.

Edit: Much too depressing description of life for a place where we come to have some light-hearted conversation with guys we've grown to tolerate.

[benji]

Win. At life. (And yelling.)

Hmm...everything I worked on I'd have to redo. But I could have them a lot earlier in life, and save time with the problems.

Around late August 2001 start telling people it feels like something crazy is going to happen soon.

Google was co-founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were students at Stanford University and the company was first incorporated as a privately held company on 7 September 1998.

Damn. Two days too late.

[Jackal]

Buy them out. At that time, they'd sell for a lot cheaper.

[Patr1ck]

I would invest in google and youtube, in any way I could at the time.

I would not take the job that my sister-in-law had setup at the paralegal company, even though I ended up making more then I do now, since I knew the company was going to be defunct.

I would have went back to school full-time, ignoring my parents questions of "How are you going to pay for it?", since I know now that they would have paid for it.

I would have told my dad when he retired to find another job or atleast get out of that chair in front of the tv. That way he might not be struggling to walk at times in the current day.

I would have tried to prevent my sister from making all those stupid choices like drugs and dumping the good guys she had and going for the mental cases.

I would have told a friend not to go grocery shopping so she wouldn't get hit by that truck and be paralyzed.

I would have got my torn knee cartilage fixed right away.

I would have started posting at the NLSC 7 years earlier.

[BigKaboom2]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Edition

[Lean]

Good thread. I hope I can write a fiction out of it.

I treat my life as a life full of wrong decisions. I stand by what I think is right and will eventually be wrong. So in the past 10 years I've made clumsy decisions that lead up to what I am now.

I look to correct them.

But if such "dream" happens to me in a coma, I'd try to change my future then.

I'll tell my uncle not to smoke so that he won't have cancer (he died last July, days after my grandma's interment).

I'll tell my grandma to watch out for her health and not be a workhorse at her age.

I'll rework my social life so it isn't as predictable as it is today.

And...

I'll try to collect Star Wars stuff.

[Fitzy]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Edition

i remember that show.

i think theres alot i would change, not that at the age of 9 could i change alot, but defiantly when i started to get a bit older. I would have tried harder to keep friendships going, made different choices with the ladies, and of course, placed a few bets, back the the future style

We almost need a thread saying what you would do if you woke up from a coma and it was 10 years into the future, rather then the past

[[Q]]

oh god, to be 12 again... like Jackal, I'd be tempted to end it because tooo much shit has happened in the last 10 years.

but if i were to make it through, I'd

not hate my sister for being the spoiled one becuase that made me an angry person for a really long time.

try to be more outgoing in high school. tried harder to make the basketball team. would've started playing organized basketball earlier. i probably would've tried volleyball, which i have grown to like.

I can easily say I would've decided to go to the same college. except during my freshman year when i was still changing and learning about life... this time i would've gone for different girls, and not let the one that got away get away again. /sad face

after that, i would try to keep everything the same.

[Drex]

I wouldn't change much. Like some of the guys already said, I'd try to invest in something, but as a 9 year old my parents would probably send me to the shrink or sth.
I'd make a move on girls I now know were interested in me (I don't want signs, I want action dammit).
I'd spend more time with the family member that now are gone.

[Joe']

I honestly wouldn't know what to do. I often wonder about this and think it'd be great to be a kid again, having no responsibilities and finding every single thing so damn interesting and beautiful and fun at the same time, but as Fitzy said, there's not much you can actually change as a kid. I'd like to change so much stuff in my life but all I could really change are the past few years, which haven't been great to say the least, mainly because of stuff that happened way before.

I mean, you guys already know I'm not exactly happy of living here in this city, I've never really been, since the beginning, and we moved here because of the '01 crisis in Argentina (mainly because of personal/family issues but it's complicated). There is no way a little kid could change that, and as much as I like to deny it, it is the main reason the past six and a half years of my life have been so volatile, again, to say the least.

I mean, I look back at '98 and it's so vivid I feel like I'm almost there, sitting on the kitchen countertop, watching cartoons, eating my Froot Loops while getting ready for my first day of school, then it all comes back to me, everything that happened in the past ten years. Everything changed, everyone changed. Lots of loved ones passed away, lots of friends were lost, but there's really nothing I can do about it. It's all bigger than me, and pretty much all of it is because of one single event in my life.

So really, if there's anything I could do if I woke up ten years ago, that is enjoying every bit of it. I was happy no matter what back then (I think we all were when we were kids,) but evidently it was not destined to last.

[Andrew]

Given a chance to re-live the past ten years, I'd like to think I could approach certain situations with more maturity, rationality and perspective, trying to keep a cooler head where in reality I did not. I'd probably encourage my grandmother to have visited a doctor much sooner than she did in the hope that we wouldn't end up losing her to cancer in 2001. Hopefully, I'd also do a better job of saving money.

Of course, going back to September 1998 would mean going through the NBA lockout again, though at least I'd know when it was going to finish.

[diddy]

Jao 1 question, the terms of re-living tells that u have same intelligent that u have now? if so, i would:
1. play basketball almost everyday in the best school in my town, maybe then go to Moscow, and could try myself as a pro
2. i'd call my girl friend and date her 1 year sooner!

[Laxation]

Invest in Amazon, Google and eBay.
Get into the NBA earlier.

[dansensei]

would have chosen a better college, and act like a real student...

[shadowgrin]

Same as what benji and Drex posted:

everything I worked on I'd have to redo. But I could have them a lot earlier in life, and save time with the problems.

I wouldn't change much
I'd make a move on girls I now know were interested in me (I don't want signs, I want action dammit).

I'll just shorten the time it took me to do some things.
Especially what Drex said, I suck at signs.

I'll also kill Andrew, Jae, benji, Matthew, Thug, or any other posters that had a high possibility of Tim handing over the NLSC to. That way the NLSC will be handled by the likes of 8-Hype and CoolMac.