I wonder sometimes how it could have worked out if I’d had decent guidance. The prospect of living back under my mother’s glare or having to do homework again feels awfully tiring, though. And I’ve forgotten my locker combination! And my schedule. And where the classrooms are. Fuck, I can’t remember what a secant is!

I would have to fight back for my own vision of life rather than my mother’s. Now that I have the life experience to even have one. Back then I was so aware I didn’t know anything about life and the world. Would she fold, or would she go thermonuclear?

Maybe the butterfly’s wing would be a little different and there’d literally be nuclear war.

Maybe I’d be satisfied to see videos of other versions of myself in other universes and see what was possible.

Say you still get your same kids.

I know the usual answer is to buy stocks, but that seems too easy.

If you were a character in a book, you’d try to stop one of the famous disasters. Conveniently, they always remember lots of details about the famous disasters.

I would occasionally read the genx subreddit, where people would say “we” did this and that, much of which didn’t apply to me, and which no one would bother to push back on.

And I’m reading a pop science book about brains, and it’s doing the usual thing about how immature teen brains are and what their behavior is like.

How true is it that “we” were taking crazy risks and being monsters to our families and so forth?

I was a good kid—although admittedly I was in an abusive home—but also if I think back to school, there are a good number of kids who didn’t seem to be awful, although maybe just seeing someone at school doesn’t tell you much.