When-abouts

   A couple of days ago, somehow or other I found myself having a talk with someone about time travel. The subject had arisen out of a comment my friend made about how cool it would be if hovercrafts took over from cars as being the principal way of getting around in the future. And, while you were at it, what if there was a hovercraft that could go back and forth in time! He quickly envisioned and then made reference to the DeLorean in the movie "Back to the Future".
   We talked about this and I asked him the inevitable question--if you could travel back in time where would you go first?
   His first stop back in time would be the night the Titanic sank and the task at hand would be to warn them about the iceberg. His next stop in time took him back to the baby Jesus, at which point he would rescue the baby and his parents. I asked him why he didn't want to go back when Jesus was a man and "rescue" him then. My friend replied that he would then have to deal with all the Romans and their weaponry. I left it at that....

   So where would YOU want to go, if you could travel back in time?

   I've pondered this many times myself and I suspect that many of us have. I find myself generally wanting to go back to monumental moments in history. Coincidentally, when my friend mentioned both Jesus and the Titanic he touched on a couple of my time travel wish list items.. Far from "saving" the baby Jesus, though, I would have wanted to travel back to the crucifixion and the surrounding events. Firstly, I would want to know if it even happened. Secondly, was it what it has been described as in the Bible, with all the accompanying significance? That would be cool to know.
   Going back to the night the Titanic sank is also hard to resist. The story of the Titanic was ingrained in me long before its discovery and movie made it so much a part of the everyday culture it is now.
   In thinking about it, most of the moments in history I'd want to go back to involve historical deaths.
   I would have wanted to have been there when Kennedy and Lincoln were assassinated. I would have wanted to have watched the gunfight at the O.K. Corral and the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Bonnie and Clyde receiving their dues. George Reeves of T.V. Superman fame meeting his end (suicide or murder?)

   The list goes on and is not always limited to the moments of people passing. I would have loved to have listened to the Gettysburg address. The driving of the last spike in the CPR tracks in B.C., connecting the east and west of Canada, would have been marvelous. Being there when my great-great grandfather, Lewis Nunn Agassiz, after sailing down the Fraser River, beached his raft at the point of land which became Agassiz, B.C. would have been personally remarkable.
   All of the above are historically significant, insofar as they impacted large groups of people and were regarded as turning points, of sorts. I wonder, though, how many of us would choose to travel back into our own pasts and watch events we are already intimately familiar with re-unfold, right in front of our eyes.
   This begs yet another question--would we visit the past in order to spectate or participate? Do we warn the Titanic, do we raise a huge fuss in Ford's Theatre? If we are visiting our own past, do we attempt to change the course of our lives?
   I can look back at my own life and think of many times when even the slightest change in what actually happened might have totally re-constructed the direction I took. All the times I didn't get what people were really saying, all the times I missed seeing people by half an hour, the many times I was just too shy or awkward to act on what I was feeling. Any of these could have been a turning point. The sum total of every move I ever made or didn't make, though, has led me here. And here is where I am happy.
   My friend made mention of the time-space continuum he'd heard about in "Back to the Future", wherein the theory lies that certain actions by someone visiting the past could be catastrophic. You had to be very careful you didn't run into yourself, for example. In general discussion around time travel, mention is also made of the "butterfly effect''. This is a theory stating that from the tiniest of actions (the flapping of a butterfly's wings, as an example) could set off a chain of escalating events which finally might produce a tornado in a completely different part of the country. All of this to point out the hypothetical danger in messing with the past.

   I suppose that "hypothetical" really is the key word in all of this. To date, time travel is impossible and can only be conjectured on. The fact that Einstein himself offered up that time travel might be one day possible, theoretically, is simply a tantalizing carrot on a stick. Unless we have people from the future walking among us...