What would you do if you had a time machine?


I have to assume that the video clip making the rounds on the Internet today — you know, the one of an old lady clutching a cell phone in 1928 — is a hoax. But let’s just say it isn’t and that time travel is possible.

Where would you go if you could travel in time?

Maybe you’d rewind the clock and undo your biggest mistakes. The girl who got away. The job you should have never taken. The times you should have said “no” instead of “yes.”

I wouldn’t.

Remember this? “Anything you do now could have serious repercussions on future events.”

Ah, what a great movie!

But Doc was right. And if we all traveled back in time and tried to erase our errors, right past wrongs, then we might destroy the future. (You know all that stuff about the space-time continuum.)

Besides, I love my mistakes. Salvador Dalí said it best: “Mistakes are almost always of a sacred nature. Never try to correct them.”

Here’s a more thorough explanation of the cell phone footage from the guy who found it.

I’m intrigued by the possibility of time travel. I think it would be the ultimate tourism. Just imagine, going back to attend the opening of a Chaplin movie. That’s historic.

Just don’t do anything that could change the future! And leave your cell phone at home.

So what would I do if I could go back? This might sound silly, but I’d go back to September of 1987. I’d fly out to Freehold, NJ, and visit my grandmother and say good-bye to her. I never had a chance to do that before she died.

What would you do? When would you go back to — or forward to?

  • Sean

    If she did travel through time, I wonder how much she was charged to check her bags.

  • Jacqui

    Wow! Small world. I went to FTHS in Freehold, NJ.

  • http://www.sunduvan.com Sunduvan

    I will go back to the time with my 1st girlfriend and will never do the same mistake again. :)

  • DChamp

    Chris, they lost her return ticket and won’t refund her money. Anything you can do to help her out? *LOL*

  • Carol

    I’d tell my mom to finish her degree, no matter what!

  • Monica

    I’d go back to October 1998. I was a young Marine and did something very stupid that I wish I could take back. My lapse of judgement haunted me through my short Marine Corps career. :( I was discharged under honorable conditions in 2001, but I didn’t feel honorable for what I had done in 1998.

    I might also go back to 1996 and warn my dad that my mother was about to break his heart. :(

  • Riroon

    Travel-wise, I’d love to go back to post-War, pre-interstate America. Roadside attractions, route 66, and winged land barges made of real American iron. Tourism was mostly a mom-n-pop please the customer type thing, and not a corporate-headed please the shareholder type thing.

  • Jesse

    yeah, a few things to do if I could go back in time, maybe finish my degree in engineering and leave business alone!

  • Roberto Pascal

    Hope she makes the ship before it leaves port.

    I’d probably go back and do the same things all over again…no regrets from me, just great memories.

  • Dang

    I still regret not taken the Concorde. I would do it if ever they fly again. In 1979 it cost only 4 times the Economy Class ticket but I was at McGill College and couldn’t afford it.

  • Barbara

    I’d go back to right before the Big Bang.

  • Norm

    Ok, so they took a cell phone back in time but who could they talk to, no cell towers. Since most everyone was bundled up they were likely just covering their ear from the wind.

  • Troy Gorda

    I think I would have to travel to see the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World in their full glory and try to save the Library at Alexandria! Then I’d go to interesting points in history, like the Roswell incident, the Tunguska Blast, and a certain grassy knoll.

  • Asasdasdasda

    I will go back to 1933. Warn Hitler about that whats coming in next 12 years and will do whatever it needs to help nazis to win the war against russians, UK and French. Maybe trying to make friendship with US and with them help kill those bastards.