“This is pretty good, and I don’t always like embarrassing stories because they remind me of MY OWN embarrassing stories, which I do just fine reminding MYSELF of, thank you.
What is it about saying or doing something dumb when you’re 7 that never leaves you? This must be the secret sauce that successful people have, they can leave that shit behind and not spend so much brain power worrying about it because, I mean, what are you gonna do? Invent a time machine and go back and not do something that was unfortunate, not horrible, but you’re not proud of? That’d be fuckin’ nuts. Nobody would endorse doing that over preventing the Holocaust or whatever, but I think a lot of us would consider it…
I mean, we could always justify it by saying, “Hey, if I stop the Holocaust, what ripples will that have in history?” Meanwhile, if I just avoid a minor embarrassment, sure, there’s the Butterfly Effect and everything (capitalized because I’m talking about the Ashton Kutcher movie version, not the theory), but I have a feeling that not being an embarrassment to myself for the rest of my life probably won’t cause something worse to happen, right? Maybe?
It seems worth the risk, anyway.
This is me officially declaring that I will go back in time and not be shirtless in a play in junior high school instead of preventing the Holocaust. And then I’ll have a new, far more reasonable thing to be ashamed of. Which works because I’d like to give a try to being ashamed about something actually shameful. Seems like a new way of living at least.”