If Time Travel Were Possible Would You Go and What Decade Would You Pick?

[BlueKota]

I would go back to the eighties and re-live the whole decade. I was in college which I loved. First at the Community College where the Social Science department was awesome especially my advisor who was a history professor and became like a second father to me. Damn I still miss him. He's the one primarily responsible for me becoming a liberal Democrat. I wish he were still alive to share my disgust about Trump with.

Then there were the two years I got to live on campus at the college where I got my history degree. I had fun with my friends, impressed the hardest professor in the department to impress, and loved debating history and politics. Got some great jobs including helping research old records for a court case, then got to work at an Historical Museum with wonderful people and a great boss.

Also my Mom and Dad, my closest Aunts and Uncles were still alive. I miss them almost every day now. I still had my barn cats too. Plus I had a lot of TV shows I loved to watch and music I loved to listen to. It sucked Reagan was President, but over all I was very happy and content with my life which I could never really say about anytime before or since.

[Skittles]

1. I would go back to the 70's and visit my grandfather

yes indeed

[BlueKota]

2. It would be so nice to see lost loved ones again.

[BOSSHOG]

7. I'd love to spend time with my Grandfather (on my Moms Side.)

He was born in 1900. Maybe a quick trip from 1910 to 1930ish. He died in 1964 but he was my best friend during some very formative years. I did not know My Fathers father. He died when I was five.

[msongs]

3. would u wear your 2024 clothes? nt

[BlueKota]

4. No. I think I dressed better then and was a lot thinner. 🤣

[splat]

5. I would go to a time in the future

I'd have to guess when war is obsolete, cancer and other diseases are easily cured, telepathy is benign and widespread, money is no longer needed because food and other material things are replicated (a la Star Trek) and we can materialize our dreams

[BlueKota]

9. That would be wonderful.

[bamagal62]

6. Before I answer...

Can I change Anything while I’m there?

[BlueKota]

10. According to a lot of science fiction no!

But for this question sure!

[LeonidPlanck]

21. Well if that's the case

Bronze Age Europe just to see what that technology bump I could bring with me might produce today.

What? I’m an experimentalist.

Could have cured so many Dark Age diseases. The wheel could have originally been steel belted. Renaissance toothbrushes! I mean, think about it. Of course Monty Python would never have been able to make The Holy Grail, but it’s an acceptable cost.

- Leo

[BOSSHOG]

8. I would be ecstatic if I could relive my freshman year in High School

1968-69. It was awesome for a 14 year old.

[BlueKota]

11. That would be great!

[OAITW r.2.0]

12. I'd head back to 1971....the music and the times were great.

[CanonRay]

13. I would go back to the early 1800s

and join up with Lewis & Clark. Imagine seeing this country untouched.

[electric_blue68]

14. Interesting! Awesome countryside (and still is)

I gotta think on this. 👍

[dickthegrouch]

15. 1610 to visit Claudio Monteverdi

And be among the first choristers to sing the piece that electrified me the first time I heard it: his 1610 Vespers.

2nd choice would be 1980s Amsterdam when Ton Koopman and the Amsterdam Baroque Choir were recording all of Johann Sebastian Bach’s choral works. I have the entire set, but I’d have been thrilled to be performing them.

[hunter]

16. Whenever I time travel I screw everything up.

As the Doctor says, "I'm a very dangerous fellow when I don't know what I'm doing."

I quit time traveling when I met my wife. I didn't want to screw that up.

My mind went a little sideways with adolescence and it wasn't until my last year of college that I'd managed to claw most of it back. I was "asked" to take time off from college twice (under the implied threat of permanent expulsion) because, quite honestly, I was crazy. My parents didn't even ask. I think I'd worn them out. At my lowest point I was living in my broken car in a church parking lot and foraging for food in dumpsters. It took me nine years to graduate.

It's like the movie Arrival. You see the future perfectly well, even the traumatic stuff, and you decide to go there anyways.

[ThoughtCriminal]

17. "I went back to warn them..."

[malthaussen]

18. I'd like to go back to 1969, and bet the farm on the Mets.

The music was pretty good, too. And the cars. And the miniskirts.

-- Mal

[Conjuay]

19. I would love to see this continent

Pre-european invasion.

[ProfessorGAC]

20. 1920s

I'd fit in because I'd be willing to wear a suit & tie everywhere.
I've got a fascination with baseball pre 1940 & jazz was starting to proliferate.
Finally, I don't drink much so the stupidity of Prohibition wouldn't affect me.
I'd still go to the speakeasies for the music though!

[chouchou]

30. Duke Ellington would be nice to see. Of course, a lot more hipsters.

Best part, I'd also look forward to the wonderful 30's big bands. Oh me....What a wonderful dream.

[CTyankee]

22. Florence, Italy, after the Plague when things were better and art flourished everywhere.

Street art for the people. More to eat for the remaining population.

[Elessar Zappa]

23. Life for most people was still terrible though.

Disease, poor sanitation, terrible inequality, etc.

[CTyankee]

24. For sure. By our standards today it's unthinkable.

[WestMichRad]

25. Assuming it would be a one-way trip,

… no way would I leave the present, despite all of its problems. We generally overlook how good we (well, most of us in the first world) have it.

[barbaraann]

26. Gobeckli Tepe just for a day 10,000 years ago.

I really, really want to know why they built those structures, but there's no time in history I would want to stay in.

[no_hypocrisy]

27. 1904

I'd stop my father's mother from being forced to marry my grandfather. She was 19. Her parents were dead. Her brother didn't want her to live with him, his wife, a small child and another on the way. She didn't want to get married.

I know I'm talking myself out of existence, but I can't stand the idea that she left Lithuania, came to America, and she had absolutely no freedom.

[greatauntoftriplets]

28. The early years of the 20th century.

I could meet both oh my grandfathers and my other grandmother. My great-great grandmother who emigrated from Ireland with h r r kids would be there. Also one great-grandmother, and two great-grandmothers. Also assorted greataunts and uncles, plus ousns I've only heard about.

The best would be seeing my parents as kids and the world they lived in.

I've seen photos of Chicago in those years, and would like experience them as thy were.

Great question.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

29. Do I get to take more than one trip?

Will I return to the present afterward?

If I have multiple trips, then there are multiple times and places I'd go to. For instance, travel back to the 1960s and '70s and fly first class on Pan Am to many places. You have no idea how wonderful it was. I do, because I was an airline employee back then, and actually flew first class on Pan Am and many other airlines.

I'd also go back and talk to all of my grandparents. My paternal grandfather died before my parents were married. The others lived long enough that I knew them. Sort of. In the way young children don't know their grandparents. All of them emigrated from Ireland. Oh, the things I could ask them.

Otherwise, one trip only (and again I'm hoping I get to return back to now at the end) I'd go to the court of Henry VIII when his marriage to Catherine of Aragon was winding down and his affair with Anne Boleyn was heating up. What did they look like? I'd take lots of pictures. What was it really like in the court then?

[LudwigPastorius]

31. Hard to narrow it down to ten years, but 1953 - 1962.

That way, I could see Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Clifford Brown, Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, Sonny Rollins, Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers, Horace Silver, the Bill Evans Trio with Scott LaFaro, Eric Dolphy, Wes Montgomery, Cannonball Adderley, Wayne Shorter, Sun Ra, and John Coltrane...in their prime, or close to it.

That's just the jazz artists I could think of offhand. I'd also go to hear Sinatra, Bob Dylan, the Beatles, Glenn Gould, Nat King Cole, etc. etc. a long list. (I would miss Hendrix, though, cause he'd still be in the Army.)

[Emile]

32. Spring 1987

Made a private bad mistake and would go back to prevent it from ever happening.

[birdographer]

33. Neanderthals and Homo sapiens

I would go (is invisibility on the table?) to an area where they co-existed to see what the relationship was. And I want to see a Neanderthal.

Either that, or Cleopatra era. Decisions, decisions.