The flipside to more readers
a column by Chris Jungle

Last week, someone asked me a question I was in no way ready to answer. The question was, "If you could live at any time in history, when would it be?" Now, I know it was just one of those 'what if' questions, and their main purpose is to kill time and find out something about how another person thinks. My problem with answering was that even though there were times and moments when I wish I was around there is no guarantee I would been at the event anyway.

I would have liked to have seen Bob Marley play (he died when I was six), but if I was older, who knows if his tour would have come by my town, or if I would have enough money to go, or if I would even like his music. It would have been nice to talk to Samuel Clemens when he was alive. It would also be nice to talk to Kurt Vonnegut, and that opportunity hasn't arisen even though I'm living in the correct time of history. Most moments in history had wars going on, and I really have no inclination to go see those first hand. The fact is this is the only time I know how to live in, and if I was living in another time, I would turn into a totally different person.

There seem to be too many people not focusing on their time and place already. While working at a homeless shelter, I had numerous drunk Indians yell at me saying I took all of their land away. Apparently, they thought I had lived during another time and that I made the decision to take the land and attempt genocide on the American Indians. I think my skin color gave away the time travel abilities. Many people my age wish they were alive during the apex of Haight-Ashbury where they could live free to do what ever they wished. When I ask them if they wanted the Hell's Angels, cops, and government beating them down, they admit that all they really want to do is be able to walk down the street smoking a joint.

Now, there is a man named Richard McLaren who hid in his little armed fortress in the badlands of Texas claiming that Texas was illegally annexed a century and a half ago. People might assume he would have wanted to live back then, but if he thinks about it, there was no better time for him to live than right now. The main reason is that the army would have shot him and his family and the hostages without a second thought one hundred fifty years ago because they didn't have time to mess with 'those Texan independence freaks.' At least he got media attention for his antics.

Maybe people play the 'when do you wish you had lived' game because they think they would have changed history, but if they can't change history in their own time, what makes them think they could have done it during another segment of history? Sure, there are lots of things in history I wish didn't happen. I wish governments never persecuted people because of skin color, religion, or condiment preference. I wish Malcolm X, Jesus, and William McKinley wouldn't have been killed. I wish the Chiefs kicker Nick Lowery wouldn't have missed his field goal attempt at the end of the 1992 playoff game against Miami. I wish the Crusades never happened. I wish Ralph Ellison would have written another book and that Robinson Crusoe was never written. I wish we didn't have prohibition, the Great Depression, or uptight fundamentalists. Of course, all of those things would have happened whether I existed during those times or not.

I'm not saying one person can't change the world, but no person alive or dead can change what has happened in the past. A person can change the perception of an event in history, but that's another story. Some say they would be more motivated if they existed in another time, but those are also the same folks who swear this week is the week they will win the lottery.

My answer to the person's question was "I think I'm doing all right in this moment of history." If I lived in another moment in time, I probably wouldn't be writing rambling columns and ultimately be doing something else morally questionable. The risk of wanting to live in another time is that you don't know where or how you'd be. You may be the spiritual and inspirational leader you've always dreamed of, or you could be a coal minor that dies of black lungs. Everything is a part of circumstance, and there are no guarantees. Well, except for the fact that we'll all play the 'what if' game until the day we die.

Chris Jungle really wishes he lived when baseball was being created, so he could have manipulated the rules to suit his own natural abilities.

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