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If you could go back in time and change just one thing, what would it be?
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#1
Make sure a certain Adolf is accepted at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna
Final score:
18points
Vix Spiderthrust 1 year ago (edited)
That wouldn't do the job. Some other evil little dickh**d would rise up in his place. What you need to do is stop the Treaty of Versailles from hammering the German economy so badly that the German people support fascism as the only way out.
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#2
I would have fought my mother harder on her insistence to keep my dad on life support after his accident. He had told me, point-blank, when I was a kid that he did NOT want to end up like his own mother - disabled and needing care, needing someone to change his diaper, etc. After his accident my mom ignored his wishes and kept him on life support. He was in a coma for 6 months. He survived, but had catastrophic brain damage. He lived for another 21 years bedridden, with a feeding tube, in diapers. His two daughters had to change him and wipe his àss. I loved my father, but he did NOT want to live that way. The worst part? The day he was dying in the hospital, 21 years after his accident, my mom refused to stay. She said she "couldn't handle it". I stayed and held my dad's hand as he died. I was the only one who stayed with him. THAT is something I don't regret or want to change. But I should have fought harder for it not to happen in the first place - when the doctors said my dad had massive brain damage after his accident, I should have fought my mom to take him off life support. It would have saved ALL of us two decades of pain and suffering watching my dad slowly get worse and worse.
Final score:
17points
Vicki Wizard 1 year ago
I'm sorry Her...If only your Dad had put his wishes in writing or asked to go to hospice - I'm so very sorry.
LakotaWolf (she/her) (Submission author) 1 year ago
Thank you, Vicki. <3 I wish I had known better as a kid or else I would have suggested it to him to put a DNR in writing. It was right after we had visited his mom in a care home - she had very advanced Alzheimer's - and I was 11 or 12 at the time. I still wish I'd done more. I don't regret the 21 years I spent taking care of him, as I loved him very much, but I hope to this day that the brain damage he sustained in the initial accident was bad enough that he had no idea what kind of a situation he was in. It was impossible to tell how aware he was or wasn't. I hope that he had no idea how bad his situation was. He's been gone for 3 years now and my mother doesn't even let us tell anyone that he's dead. She pretends he's still alive. I had to find my uncle - his brother - myself and drive two hours to tell him in person that his brother was dead. I thought it was completely unfair that my mom wouldn't even tell his family members. It's been a mess. XD
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#3
Prevented Donald Trump from being born!
Final score:
15points
Vicki Wizard 1 year ago
He scares me spitless...I pray he won't become a Dictator - that not only would be disastrous but would put America in great peril.
Odin Schmidt (Submission author) 1 year ago
America is already in great peril due to him being "President" the first time. Thanks to him we are well on the way to becoming the newest third-world country on the planet!
Load More Replies... #4
Head back to 2006. Buy a plane ticket to Australia and then do everything I could to make sure Steve Irwin didn't make it to work on September 4th.
Final score:
14points
Vicki Wizard 1 year ago
I miss him to this day - and when I see a manta ray with people around it, I feel nervous.
#5
I wish I had studied harder and also, never picked up a cigarette.
Final score:
13points
#6
I believe that you shouldn't change your past, only your future. The only thing that I would change though... I would say to my father more often how much I loved him and I would hug him way more...
Final score:
12points
Danish Susanne 1 year ago (edited)
I read once that a nurse told that this is exactly what most persons regrets when they are close to death, that they didn't say"I love you" to someone they loved.
Vicki Wizard 1 year ago
the hospital wouldn't let me in to my love's intensive care room with the walker I need 24/7 so my husband died alone...something I'll never be at peace with.
Load More Replies... #7
I'd prevent my mother from taking that horrible retail job that's eating away her physical and mental health and will probably end in her total collapse. It was supposed to be a temporary thing and sounded like a good idea at the time, now it's like 15 years and she has developed some kind of Stockholm syndrome in the sense she seems to value her work more than herself and her well-being (a textbook example of old-school, self-destructive work ethics).
Final score:
9points
#8
I'd prevent Roman Emporer Theodosius from declaring christianity to be the official religion of the roman empire.
Final score:
9points
Vix Spiderthrust 1 year ago
Constantine was Christian, but it was Theodosius who adopted Christianity as the state religion of Rome.
Load More Replies... #10
I would write a different Bible.
Final score:
5points
trevor (Submission author) 1 year ago
I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition.
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#11
My best, my worst and all between made me to who I am today. When I look in the mirror I see a guy I can easily live with. So: Nothing. Just do it all again.
Final score:
5points
#12
Vote earlier in life.
Final score:
5points
Huddo's sister 1 year ago
I didn't realise until recently how few countries have compulsory voting.
#13
Should have learned guitar or drums instead of saxophone🎷...
Final score:
5points
Vix Spiderthrust 1 year ago
But how will that help them to unlearn the saxophone?
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Dumb teenager 1 year ago
Believe it or not I actually have the same issue. I've played the alto since year 3 but I hate everything to do with jazz. Funk, blues, soul, you name it, I hate it. I'm a rock/pop person (and on rare occasions alternative and classical) but for some unknown reason my year 3 brain went ooh, shiny and chose to learn saxophone instead.
#14
That when the Europeans first visited Africa, they met them with open arms and didn't see them as savages and inferior, but as people, human beings and thus, slavery never became a thing. Which also prevented racism now.
Final score:
5points
Esme Weatherwax 1 year ago
Europeans didn't invent slavery. Slavery was in place for thousands of years before and happened across the entire globe. White Europeans were taken as slaves by the Arabian countries long before Columbus landed in America. The word slave comes from Slav - Eastern European people that were enslaved before the transatlantic slave trade. If you want to go back in time to stop slavery the you need to go way back
Ogidi Girl 1 year ago
They obviously wish to prevent the transatlantic slave trade from Africa. Don't pretend you didn't understand that.
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#15
I would have asked my girlfriend out sooner
Final score:
5points
#16
done enuf d***s to get up the courage to either myrder my abusive drunken dear old dad or to auff myself or both hell cannot be any worse than these too many years I've lived
Final score:
3points
cerinamroth 1 year ago
You can have a future without either of those things. Find somewhere safe, get help, listen to what you need. You are worth it. The best revenge is a future well lived.
Danish Susanne 1 year ago (edited)
I am very glad, that you didn't murder him, because that would have really messed up your chances for a better future, as crinamroth suggests.
#17
If I change my past, then first I achieve my goals. But this is not possible
Final score:
3points
#18
I'd set up a play date for "The Donald', Putin and all the S.Korean upper echelons who have access to creating worldwide catastrophies to get caught in an inescapable room and find a person with honor -- where, I'm not sure - to handle all the nonsense with wars which are always for selfish reasons. I would love to rid the term "Collateral Damage" from our vernacular. I just hate the meaning of that word...
Final score:
3points
censorshipsucks 1 year ago
give them each a flicknife and let them sort it out between them mano a mano
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What do you think ?
Child of the King 1 year ago
I would tell myself that just because I am not normal. That doesn't mean I need special treatment. I would also go back and repair the relationship I had with my grandpa before he passed in 2004
Danish Susanne 1 year ago
If I could be sure of knowing what I know now, I would go back to 10 years before I met my late husband. I didn't meet him until I was 29 years, so I would try to catch him in order to have him with me 10 years longer, than what we got.
John Dilligaf 1 year ago
Go back to 1787 and the Constitutional Convention with a whole list of ideas.
censorshipsucks 1 year ago
Surprisingly a lot of personal anecdotes/regrets rather than global ones. Clearly if the opportunity exists to prevent massive wars you should take those first, e.g. Stop Gavrilo Princip, Stop Adolf, Stop Kissinger, etc. My main regrets are being mean to people who cared about me, and not asking that one girl out.. pretty standard.
Child of the King 1 year ago
I would tell myself that just because I am not normal. That doesn't mean I need special treatment. I would also go back and repair the relationship I had with my grandpa before he passed in 2004
Danish Susanne 1 year ago
If I could be sure of knowing what I know now, I would go back to 10 years before I met my late husband. I didn't meet him until I was 29 years, so I would try to catch him in order to have him with me 10 years longer, than what we got.
John Dilligaf 1 year ago
Go back to 1787 and the Constitutional Convention with a whole list of ideas.
censorshipsucks 1 year ago
Surprisingly a lot of personal anecdotes/regrets rather than global ones. Clearly if the opportunity exists to prevent massive wars you should take those first, e.g. Stop Gavrilo Princip, Stop Adolf, Stop Kissinger, etc. My main regrets are being mean to people who cared about me, and not asking that one girl out.. pretty standard.
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