Back in time
Posted by RemBrandt1623@reddit | GenX | View on Reddit | 48 comments
Is there a moment in Gen X time, let's say from 73' on... if you could go back and save or warn someone who would it be. Timeline regardless. I realize the obvious, Cobain, etc.. but others!?
TimeProfessional7120@reddit
I'd stop the Columbine massacre in the hopes that it would help ward off the copycat school shootings that exploded in its aftermath.
HeyItsHelz@reddit
Let people know that Ronald Reagan was evil and would be the beginning of the fall of Amercia.
Substantial_Cow7628@reddit
Indeed. Those ingrates should have learned to enjoy 10% inflation, 20% interest rates, and 20000 Soviet missiles pointed at them.
EnjoyingTheRide-0606@reddit
But LBJ was good? Not!!
bene_gesserit_mitch@reddit
Richard Nixon has entered the chat.
thisusernameavailabl@reddit
Laughs in Woodrow Wilson
stanley_leverlock@reddit
I wish I'd recognized a serious problem with a friend and done something about it. Around 2004 or 2005 I started distancing myself from a longtime friend because he'd started drinking heavily and became really obnoxious about his political beliefs. We crossed paths every year or so and we'd reminisce and I'd realize how much I missed him but he'd be so much of a pain at the end of the evening that I'd get frustrated with him we'd end up not hanging out together until we randomly ran into each other. Then in 2018 after I hadn't seen him for a few years I went to his funeral. A years earlier he got divorced and went to rehab a few times and got fired from his job. Eventually he drank himself to death. Fuck. He was stubborn as hell so I don't feel like I could have saved him but I'd feel better if I'd been close enough to him to try.
DavePHofJax@reddit
1989, myself. Just wait until November. The girl you want will be writing you a letter. Yes, I said WRITING YOU A LETTER!!!!
Head-Reindeer-4082@reddit
I’m going to violate the rule and go back to February 1959 and tell Ritchie and Buddy and the Big Bopper not to get on the damn plane, and tell Roger Peterson (the pilot) to get an updated weather briefing so he knows not to make the flight.
corpus-luteum@reddit
Just tell the pilot.
RemBrandt1623@reddit (OP)
I've thought about that so many times. And stopping Randy Rhoads from his plane disaster.
ancientastronaut2@reddit
The day the music...kept going.
Anonymo123@reddit
for me it would be sept 11.. clear those buildings and somehow warn the pilots\FAA\whoever to lock down the flights.
Super-Preparation654@reddit
I’d make sure John Hinkley didn’t miss
Ianthin1@reddit
In the late 90’s my cousin hurt his back in a car wreck. Dr put him on pain killers instead of giving him the surgery needed to truly fix it. It led to years of addiction, and all the things that go with it. Lost him 5 years ago. He had been clean for ten years and his wife left him. Fell off the wagon and triggered heart problems that took him a few weeks later.
I figure if I stop that car wreck he’s still here today.
I’m definitely not wasting a chance like that on a freaking celebrity.
xt0rt@reddit
Word. I'm so sorry for your loss 🙏😔❤️
Icy-Salamander5287@reddit
I'd tell my parents to invest in computer tech.
Strong_Medium_6646@reddit
John Lennon!!!!
sits_with_cats@reddit
My older sister's best friend Cheryl, who lived across the street. She helped me learn to ride a bike, & would sometimes peddle me around the neighborhood singing 'Smoke on the Water.' She & a coworker were murdered while house sitting for a relative back in 1981. Never caught the killer.
RemBrandt1623@reddit (OP)
Oh god. So sorry. Thank you for sharing that. We had a triple abduction, double homicide in our town when we were kids, middle school. I was only close with one who died. But knew the one who survived. He eventually came back to school. You can only imagine the pain he went through.
sits_with_cats@reddit
Damn, that's pretty tragic, too. I hope they caught the perpetrator. There are just too many sick people in this world!
W0gg0@reddit
Probably the crew of the space shuttle, Challenger.
RemBrandt1623@reddit (OP)
Oh man. Yeah. Like all of us, that day is seared into my memory.
honeybadgerdad@reddit
NASA knew there was an issue.
thenoid42@reddit
A friend of mine nicknamed Gumby, fell from riding on the bumper of a truck and hit his head and died. But if we're talking "famous" people then it would be the singer for Alice in Chains, Layne Staley.
penguinwasteland1414@reddit
Was gumby from Florida? I knew a gumby there. Daytona Beach
thenoid42@reddit
Nope. Opposite side of the country.
CodeNameFrumious@reddit
Assuming I could get to see them, I'd find our politicians in the year 1993-1994 and tell them to get their shit together in general. This isn't a left-wing or right-wing thing. It's more of an overall thing. I think that our leaders had an opportunity in the 1990s to truly turn this into a better world, and they completely squandered it.
SnowblindAlbino@reddit
That "they" was largely at the feet of Gingrich and the GOP. We had the "peace dividend" from the end of the Cold War in hand, and made some modest talk about universal health care-- to which the right went ballistic, giving us a decade of anti-Clinton investigations and the scam election of 2000.
Emotional-Writer-766@reddit
I'd roll Bon Scott onto his side.
LoudMind967@reddit
Bonham and Hendrix too
5uck3rpunch@reddit
I would have warned my mother to not get the knee operation that killed her. The doc took her off of blood thinners for the operation & she had a heart attack & died on the operating table.
robmsor@reddit
John Lennon. Even though I was a little kid just turning 10 when he was killed, his was the first celebrity death that really hit me.
Beautiful_Arm8364@reddit
I'd go back and have a deep conversation with Jim Henson about the value of timely medical intervention and the horror of decades of off-sounding Muppets.
DPax_23@reddit
Me. I'd sit me down and explain just how effed up my family is so I'd figure it out faster and gtfo younger.
MaximumJones@reddit
That's easy, River Phoenix. I think he would have been a huge star.
Azerafael@reddit
My mum. It started with one of those irritating mouth ulcers. 6 years later the cancer took her. She just waited too long to do a biopsy and by the time she did, it was too late.
This led to my dad having a 2nd wife who had a daughter from her previous marriage. Which then led to them draining my dad of every single dollar right down to the inheritance my mum had left for us.
They're now working on my dad for him to sell the family home (the only thing left) before he passes on.
mcluhan007@reddit
Kind of like the plot of the movie Frequency (2000).
KrofftSurvivor@reddit
One of the best frickin' movies I've ever seen.
Civil_Inspector_5697@reddit
Myself
skeeterbmark@reddit
I would go back about 20 years and tell my best friend to get his shit wired up tightly. He basically ate and drank himself to death over a 15 year period. Gained 150 pounds, almost died from congestive heart failure at 48, and then died in a car accident about 2 years after that.
2K84Man@reddit
My son
DodgyRogue@reddit
I’d tell myself to pull my head in and actually study for my HSC.
GboyFlex@reddit
I would go back to tell my dad to check his blood sugar. His kidneys were almost gone before he knew he had diabetes...I miss him.
watts6674@reddit
I guess I would not swim so fast to the egg!
zombie_spiderman@reddit
Man, I got a kid now. I can't go fucking around with time machines
Manwombat@reddit
Always the same answer to this. Thirty years ago nearly to the day, my best mates wife, she was also one of my oldest friends, died. I’d go back and tell her not to drive tired that night.
Tough-Principle-3950@reddit
I just thought of a girl in my high school. I found out died a few years ago.