A friend posted this on Facebook recently:

For the sake of this discussion, let’s make a few things clear. If you go through the Blue door you will arrive 15 years in the future (so, if you’re reading this when it’s posted, that would be the year 2033), and you would be physically 15 years older. But you would be alive (as some people where saying things like “you could be dead in 15 years!”). And if you go through the Red door, you’re set into the past, to whatever year it was when you were 10 (so, if you’re 40 years old now, you go back to the year 1988), and your current consciousness is transferred into your 10 year old body.

Got it?

So most people in that thread were saying that they’d pick the Red door, talking about how they things they could do right this time, with school, work, relationships, etc. And, of course, a lot of folks bring up things like buying stocks in companies that they know will be huge, or gambling on sporting events that they know the outcome. Now, while I understand the appeal of that (who hasn’t ever wished they could go back and do-over some event or part of their life?), I said that if you really think about what this would be like, it wouldn’t be that appealing. Especially the older you are now.

Seriously, do you really want to go back to being a 10 year old kid? A grown adult, with all the thoughts and feelings of an adult, but now you’re trapped in a 10-year old body? I’d back in 5th Grade. Everyone was focusing on things like how schoolwork would be much easier this time, but you still have to go to school. The idea of having to get up everyday to go to Elementary school again sounds like a nightmare! Maybe it might seem fun for a day or two, but that shit would wear off real quickly. And now you’re just another kid in school, except you’re mentally advanced. Who are you going to be playing with at recess? All my old friends, and other classmates, are 10 year old kids, I’m not going to be able to relate to them now, so whom am I supposed to socialize with? What am I going to do for fun, when all the TV shows, movies, books, and comics that are out, are all stuff I’ve already read or watched? And having to live without all the modern advances that I’m used to now. No internet? No smartphones?

And think about having to go without sex and dating. I’m not attracted to 10 year old girls now. Or 11 yea old girls. Or 12 year old girls. It wouldn’t be until like halfway through high school where I’d theoretically start to find girls “my age” attractive. But even then, I may not be able to get over my mental hang-ups, as I’m trying to go out with 16 year old girls, while being an adult in my mind. And there’s still that relate-ability factor. I’d still mentally more advanced and mature than the teenagers that I’d be forced to be around. I’d probably go insane before I even get that far.

Even the idea of taking advantage of future knowledge wouldn’t be as easy as it sounds. It’s not like I could buy stocks or make legal bets when I’m 10 years old. I’d have to hope I could maybe somehow convince my mother to start investing in the stock market and listen to me about it, which is doubtful.

I guess there are certain things I could do. Like ask my mother for a typewriter, and I then I could “write” a bunch of hit stories, like the Harry Potter series, and send them in to a bunch of publishers and surely someone would publish me. I’d be a child prodigy author, with this hit book series. And I could follow that up with The Hunger Games, and then Twilight, and then 50 Shades of Gray! Or I could resume my attempt to be a rapper, except now I’d basically be able to write a bunch of hit songs, decades before the real rappers had a chance. Jay Z, Eminem, Nas, I’d make all their hits my own!

But, no, I really wouldn’t want to have to relive all those years starting at 10 years old again. I’d prefer if there was a 3rd door, where I could just time travel like Biff in Back To The Future 2, where I go back and give my 10 year old self a bunch of future information for him to use, and then I return to my own time and see how much better I made my life.

Otherwise, I’ll just take the Blue door. Sure, for me, that would put me in my 50’s, but that $50 million dollars would come in handy…