Someone hands you the keys to their handy-dandy time machine. What do you alter from the past, if anything?

Think about it before you answer. It has to be something you can alter yourself. And the ripples must be something you can live with.

I had a discussion recently where someone was shocked I wouldn't prevent my father from dying. (It's been over 20 years). If he hadn't, life would have been very different for my sister, and she never would have met her husband and had three wonderful girls. I miss my father, but he wouldn't want his grandkids not to be. My answer would be far different 2 weeks after he died, of course.

A tiny edit (not to me, but most likely to the world at large): I'd go back to when a loved one was terminally ill, and when I let fear rule my actions and didn't spend nearly as much time with them as I wish I would have, said the things I wish I would have, etc.

Its on a very, very short list of things that I truly regret in my life, and would be just about the only one I'd actually take drastic measures to remedy.

I wouldn't try to change events, just try to make more of the time I had when I still had it.

I'll qualify my response : If I could pull a "Millenium" and give him more time alive, at some point in the future, while leaving no evidence of the change, I'd do it. OTOH, maybe I did already.

I think this sums it up for me:

There are many parts of my youth that I am not proud of... there were lose threads… untidy parts of me that I would like to remove, but when I pulled on one of those threads it unraveled the tapestry of my life.
-Quote from Star Trek

First, I would stay clear the hell away from my immediate timeline. No way would I change who and what I did. Second, I'd hit up all the major and awesome moments in history in the past, present and future. I would want to go to the DePeche Mode concert at the Rose Bowl in 1986. I would go to the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1992. I would hit up Woodstock for all three days in 1969. I would go to a pub for man's first manned mission to Mars in 2045. I would visit Coronation Day for Emperor Augustus I of the reformed Roman Empire in 2293. I would visit the Christmas Armistice in the trenches during 1914 and play some soccer. I'd go try to meet Nicolas Tesla in 1892, see if he and I could do some damage. I'd avoid any time before that, as there was just way too much crap on the streets. And really, who wants to step on crap?

Derek

Fantastic, Derek. You, sir, are so ready for a big blue box of your very own.

Kick hitler in the nuts.
Kick Abraham Lincoln in the Nuts.
Stalin? Kick to the nuts.
Elizabeth Stuart Gardner... Kick to the... box?

The list goes on.

I zee. Robert, you appear to have zee issues with authority figures. Are you zertain zat a constructive dialog vould not be better?

Tell me about your muzzer

I kicked her in the nuts.

Then it was OFF to therapy.

I zee. Zo your muzzer haz nuts. Vold dat make you a little piss....er?