You’re sitting by a campfire, hot dogs cooking (ah, how perfect) when suddenly…BOOM! A time machine appears! How’d it get there? Well, don’t worry about that for now, just get in and close the door!
A sign prompts you to choose a trip to the past or to the future with a note that you can return back to the present time later.
You try and open the door to get out, but no luck. The door is sealed shut behind you. No way out except…
A countdown clock appears just above your head. 10…9…8…7…6…5…
Quick! Press a button before, well, something bad happens!
Where are you going? Somewhere in the past? Back to the 1950s? The 1900s? 1850? 1750?! Or are you zipping straight ahead into the future. How far ahead? 2030? 2050? 2100? 2500?
After you respond, please leave a comment and tell us which direction and where (and when!) you’re headed. We may use these for an upcoming story, so be specific.
Oh, and have fun out there…
Into the future. 2 weeks. Get as many lottery numbers as I could, and then back to the present. Might as well take advantage of the situation… 😉
Into the past…stock up on some good financial options. No desire to know the future before it happens.
Give me tomorrow’s newspaper today and we’ll both be rich by sunset.
Into the past, only if I could change (redo) some things.
I would go into the past, not to change history but to meet and talk to some of the great people and minds of American history, the founding fathers.
Into the past, there are a lot of mine and my wife’s family I would like to meet and find out why they left and moved to the USA. What it was like crossing the ocean and country to land in Michigan when they did.
Into the future to see what’s ahead and can I ward off any that’s coming my way.
Alter history.
Why? So we can F it up worse than we did the first time?
Better to learn from the past, and alter the future.
I love genealogy & have trouble finding some of my ancestors. I would go back & find them.
I think I will stay right where I’m at
I would like to go back to the 1725 – 1800 period. I would visit Europe to meet Mozart, Beethoven and other great composers of the Classical and Romantic periods. In America I would want to meet and talk to our Founding Fathers as well as everyday laborers and farmers. I’d also love to meet and talk to some of the great Native Chiefs whose wisdom and uncanny vision always amazes me. Also, just to see the incredible unspoiled land this great country was.
And therein lies the problem. To many of “us” are stuck in the past (maybe nostalgic is a better word), and too few focus on the possibilities of the future. My home state (WI) moto is “Forward!”. And to move forward requires the courage to leave behind the (perceived) security of the past, for the unknown wonders of the future.
Personally my priorities are to live and focus on the present, look forward to the future with hope and optimism, and to remember the past as honestly as possible.
That is a very broad generalization of people having a different view from you. Live and let live may be a better motto.
For me, I prefer the Era of two sexes.
The math was sure simpler.
Crappy food, no showers, no refrigeration, blah blah blah, and hard hard work for most folks with little reward. I’ll take the future anyday, as long as it includes tacos.
I would go into the past to the beginning of the U.S. It must have been such an exciting and terrifying time in our history. The promise of a new land and new opportunities. The threat of England sending soldiers to counter the insurrection. The secret meetings. The eventual success of the revolution. The work to create a new nation. The thought processes that went into the constitution and the attempt to see into the future and plan for the country’s growth. I would definitely want to be involved in it all.
I hate to think of what the future will be like here. A much simpler, courteous, beautiful time was in the past. Take me anywhere from the thirties through the fifties…
I would definitely like to go back and meet my great and later grandparents, ask them about their lives and see how things were at their times.
I deeply regret not getting more information from my parents about their history, have discovered very late in life that genealogy is a very fascinating subject.
As kids and adults, we never thought to ask our parents those important questions.
Past, assuming I could also hear for myself exactly what was said or done and gain better understanding how we got to our present.
Not the future for fear too much would be magic to me. Robert Heinlein said “One man’s “magic” is another man’s engineering.” I’d survive better in the past.
I’d want to spend time with relatives that passed.
You missed a choice…I’m staying where I am. I have shades of being stuck somewhere like the current situation with the astronauts! I can wait until heaven to visit those from the past.
I would choose the future. You can’t change the past, but you might be able to work and change the future!
If one is curious about the past, open a book, watch a newsreel, visit it through history.
The future is yet to be written. I’d go for the future (and reintroduce tacos if need be)….
Taco Bell and the 3 sea shells
Historical ‘facts’ need critical examination.
The past and go on the Lewis and Clark expedition
Can I come with you, Paul?😉 Sounds exciting! Have a great day. 😀 –Diane aka Mountain Mama at RVtravel.com
Thank you, RV Travel! 🙂 Interesting question. I would like to go into the past, but only as an observer. I have little (no?) interest in changing history. I also would like an opportunity to secure or craft approximately appropriate attire for the chosen periods. I’d like to visit 1800 to see my great (X 4 or 5) grandfather who came into the Savannah Valley of East Tennessee from North Carolina when Tennessee was 4 years old. I’d also like to visit 1905 Chattanooga to see my maternal grandmother’s parents and meet her sisters. They would all be dead 13 years later and my grandmother an orphan. Lastly, I’d like to get back to the Savannah Valley (just outside Chattanooga) in 1940 to see …
… Daddy as a fifth-grader, Momma as a third-grader, and my grandparents when they were in their thirties. I think that all these visits at different times would give me a better understanding of whence I came. Thanks again, have a great day, safe travels, and safe stays. 🙂
The past…the future is not looking too good.
I have already seen too much future and have always said that I was born 150 years too late. I would like to see how my family got here in 1725 – the voyage from Europe, why did they leave?, who did the three brothers leave behind?, the trek across the country to the Mid-West, how they acquired land and farmed dirt to make a living.
Past or future it’s all about the travel
Past…if I could make a change or two! 😉
Past, the future is scary. I’d love to spend time with grandparents that died before I was born & the other set that died when I was very young. Also get to know my dad better. He passed away when I was 14, it would be great to have known him from an adult’s perspective. I have no desire to see what is in store for me. It may be wonderful but what if it weren’t? Nope, I will just be content to wait to see what happens & hope to do enough in the present to make my future as good as possible.
Show me someone who is not optimistic about the future, and I will show you someone who is not right with God.
all ready lived the past on to the
next step
Neither.
I would go just far enough in the future to know what to invest in for a comfy retirement.
Going back to the past when my family splintered due to a huge fight between parents and siblings. Large family, 13 kids. They had a stone quarry and were stone masons, built most of a town in south eastern Oklahoma. Half went west, the other half northeast. It would be interesting to be an outside observer to see what actually happened to trigger the breakup. Late 1800s.
Dh says to the recent past to invest in Microsoft. I wish you had a neither button. I wouldn’t enter the dam thing. Too afraid of changing the past & afraid the future might be a post nuclear holocaust I’m sorta with the Good Book on this, Matthew, Sufficient unto each day is the evil thereof.