Go Back in Time

A while back on the NDN Back Room, there was a discussion regarding time travel. To wit: If you could travel back in time to influence a decision point in history, what would it be? The usual suspects like killing so-and-so or preventing whats-his-name from being killed were explicitly excluded, and you could assume that you had the wherewithal to actually make a difference.

I gave the matter much prayerful meditation. At first, I wanted to go back and convince Henry VIII not to split with the Catholic Church over Ann Boelyn, but that seemed a little too esoteric for me (not to mention not a guarantee that a Protestant church wouldn't have formed in England anyway). Talking President Nixon out of doing Watergate seemed to be a waste of time -- if he didn't get caught for that, he would've been caught for something.

Then it came to me, and I knew exactly where I'd set my Wayback Machine: New York City, January, 1975. I'd sit down with John Lennon and convince him he should stay with May Pang rather than meet with Yoko Ono, a meeting resulting in the end of Lennon's "Lost Weekend" and his relationship with Pang.

May Pang was good for John Lennon. While with her, he rekindled a number of relationships, not the least of which were those with his former Beatles bandmates. Near the end of 1974, there was talk of some musical collaboration and healing of hurts. If that had continued, I can only imagine the kind of music produced. Or maybe I can't, because it would boggle the mind.

But in January of 1975, Lennon ended up back with Ono, and everything went back to square one. Lennon created more music, but remained estranged from his fellow Beatles. And six years later, he was still in NYC when Mark David Chapman walked up to him in front of the Dakota. If he'd still been with Pang, they'd likely have been in California instead.

Perhaps not earth-shattering, but that's where I'd choose to go.