Perchance to dream

What if you could go back, and why?

Photo by Ben den Engelsen on Unsplash

Reminder: We’re still in Low Power Mode, as I take a few days off. During Low Power Mode, we skip the “7 other things” and revisit some “greatest hits” from the last 5 years of the newsletter. Here’s a great one from before 95% of you were subscribers!

Perchance to dream

A while back I had a dream. It was super-vivid and unusual.

In the morning, I wrote down what I remembered. A few days later, I had the dream again—only, a second version, incorporating the first, but expanding it.

Then it happened a few more times: Have the dream, write what I remember, have an expanded version of the dream.

The premise of the dream is simple:

• I go to bed after a nice 50th birthday dinner with my wife and daughter.

• I wake up. Only, it's 40 years ago, the early 1980s, and I come to find that I've been transported back in time to my 10th birthday.

I'm frantic. I realize my wife is a 10-year-old girl living hundreds of miles away. My daughter won't be born for decades—if at all, in this new timeline.

Also, I can't tell anyone. Who would believe me? I look to all the world like an adolescent. Imagine your child wakes up tomorrow and says:

This is going to sound weird, but I'm from the year 2062. During the second Usha Vance presidential administration, if someone asks you to take an aircar to one of the old Elon Musk satellites and go to the moon for dinner, politely decline. I can't tell you why.

Back to the 1980s. I'm sharing a room with my 6-year-old brother. My parents are only in their 30s.

I start to question my memory. Did I imagine this life—the one you’re in, in which I'm a guy who lives in New Jersey and writes a newsletter and for whom one of the greatest moments of the day involves 10 minutes of kicking a soccer ball around with his daughter before the school bus in the morning?

Do I try to just keep it to myself? Do I go to fourth grade as if I don't already have a law degree? Go to movie premieres and amuse myself by casually yelling out things like:

• Back to the Future: "Why can't they just use the lightning bolt from the clock tower to power the DeLorean?"

• The Shawshank Redemption: "I'll bet Andy Dufresne has been tunneling out of this prison through the whole story!"

• The Sixth Sense: "Bruce Willis's character obviously died in the first scene! He's a ghost this entire movie!"

In theory I might put big bets on sporting events, except for two problems:

• First, I'm 10. I can't bet. I can't just get on a plane to Vegas.

• And second, which is funny, I'm not like, the world's biggest sports guy.

I tested myself after the dream, wondering how many big sporting events I could remember the exact dates and scores for, especially back in the early 1980s. I got some of them right, but not enough to be confident about every bet.

Believe me, this goes on and on. But ultimately, in the dream and in my real-life notes afterward, I decide that I have to look at this strange curse as a gift, and try to do something good with it.

Even as a 10-year-old kid, I set out to think of a single tragic event that will later happen in my version of the future—and try to stop it.

I'll tell you the event I came up with in the comments, and why. But for a Friday comment thread, I have two questions for you:

• Have you ever had a recurring dream? What do you remember about it?

• And, imagine you really could go back in time and change one thing in history. What do you think you'd choose, and why?

It’s why we have comments, folks. Hope to see you there.