If I Could Turn Back Time

During the course of his recent podcast trilogy about William Shakespeare (which, by the way, is really excellent - I had no idea, for example, how much our current language owes to the Bard), Professor G. Truck postulates that the optimal use of a time machine would be to return to 16th century England to watch a performance at the Globe Theatre. His logic is persuasive, but I can think of a few other places in time I'd like to go.

Mine is, of course, a very Western perspective. Others might wish to be back on the steppes with Genghis Khan, or watching the invention algebra, or pasta, or gunpowder. I don't know from that stuff, so I'll focus more narrowly.

I thought about heading back a few decades and dropping into the ice rink in Lake Placid in 1980 to witness the Miracle on Ice in person. The atmosphere must've been batshit crazy - height of the Cold War, a bunch of American kids taking on and beating the Soviets on U.S. soil. Worth seeing, I think. But I watched that game on TV, so it wouldn't be quite the same as experiencing history completely fresh.

So I got to thinking more about that history angle, and thought about how fascinating it might be to observe the landing of the Allied Expeditionary Forces on Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944. The sheer scale and world-changing import of the D-Day invasion seen live, that seems epic. You'd probably see a lot of blood, guts, agony, and death in that place and time, though, which would be a bit of a downer. I think I'll skip it.

Less blood and guts, but maybe equal amounts of mud and mess would greet us if we decided to spend a weekend on Max Yasgur's farm in August 1969. Depending on how the metaphysics of time travel work, we might even meet some groovy hippie chicks (or dudes, for those of us more inclined in that direction) while we jammed to Jimi, the Dead, Janis, CSNY, and the rest. Makes a strong case, Woodstock, but we'll keep our options open.

Maybe we could head to the room where it happened, and sit in on the deliberations between the Founding Fathers as they debated the future of our then-new nation. It was hot as fuck in Philly that summer, though, and there wasn't indoor plumbing, which argues against it. And I'd really worry that I'd be tempted to tell them about the current state of affairs in the nation and convince them to stick with the King. Maybe we shouldn't go back to 1776.

Switching gears a bit, wouldn't it be fun to go back to the time and place your parents met? How cool to see the beginning of the relationship that led to your very existence. Two things, though. What if I Marty McFlyed it and fucked up the future, and erased myself? That'd suck. And my parents met when they were toddlers, so I'm guessing the sparks would be hard to discern. 

Would you want to see Beethoven at work? Einstein theorizing? The first cavefolk taming fire? Dinosaurs roaming in their natural habit? (I've seen Jurassic Park. That seems like it could be dangerous.)

What about Wilt Chamberlain scoring 100 points? Or being part of the crowd of 200,000 that watched Uruguay shock Brazil in the Maracana in the 1950 World Cup? Seeing Bobby Thompson hit the Shot Heard 'Round the World would be fun.

Maybe hearing Martin Luther King speak live would be edifying? Or watching Martin Luther nail up his theses. Would Michelangelo let us watch on while he painted the Sistine Chapel? He probably wouldn't even notice, honestly.

Or maybe we could solve some mysteries. Let's go find the Holy Grail (or, let's go watch the Monty Python gang write The Holy Grail - even better). We could finally determine whether Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. 

I guess, in the end, I need to be true to myself. Professor Truck is an English teacher and a Shakespeare scholar. Me, I'm a simple guy, and sports is probably the most important through line in my personal history. I want to be in the middle of a big crowd, to hear the roars and the groans, feel the emotional clench and release, share in the experience. Part of me wants to head to the Fenway Park bleachers in 1960 and sit next to my then-14-year-old Dad and watch Ted Williams homer in his final at-bat. But more of me is drawn to the historic parallels implicit in leaving a time of significant societal upheaval and traveling to watch Jesse Owens make Adolph Hitler uncomfortable during the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Maybe I'd learn something I could bring back to the future.