What if you were able to travel back in time and visit your younger (and more vibrant) self? I’ve often thought about this and won­dered if my younger self, at 6 or 7 years of age, would think the older or future ver­sion of myself turned out okay. I know grow­ing up I was very trust­ing of strangers, maybe too much now that I think about it, but not to the extent where I’d jump in their car at the flash of candy.

Grow­ing up I was mostly a home­body, but on occas­sion would travel around the neigh­bor­hood with my pack of friends. Okay, let’s be hon­est, my group of two or three friends. What would hap­pen if on one of these ram­buc­tious, youth wan­der­ing days I’d come across a man in his mid-20s, blonde hair, 6 feet 2 inches. Upon first impres­sion I’d notice the man was clean shaven and looked pleas­ant enough, unlike those strangers you see in ele­men­tary school videos; droopy eyes, beer gut and blood drip­ping from their sharp­ened teeth.

Then I won­der how, if it were pos­si­ble to time travel, would my future self find my younger self? In the movies, this is a rel­a­tively sim­ple process because it seems the main char­ac­ter always remem­bers where he or she was in their past lives. In real­ity, I would think this would be dif­fi­cult espe­cially if you had no rec­ol­lec­tion of your time­line, that is where you where at this such and such time. The only way I can think of to approach your younger self is to lit­er­ally stalk your past fam­ily. Nat­u­rally, you’d most likely remem­ber where you lived so it would just be a mat­ter of camp­ing out in front of your past house and then wait­ing, lurk­ing, look­ing creepy as ever.

After I real­ize that the only way I’d be able to approach my younger self would be by stalk­ing my fam­ily in the past, I tend to let that thought dis­s­ap­ate. My thought, some­what mixed up in this long expla­na­tion, is would my younger self approve of the future ver­sion of myself?