People often ask me, if I could travel anywhere in time, where in time would I go?

I’ve had this conversation numerous times because somewhere around the age of twenty-three, my friends and I decided that we’d come up with enough conversation topics and would just repeat our greatest hits in the few times we talk to each other each year.

Perhaps the only conversation I have more frequently is debating who’s better, The Rock or Stone Cold – despite the fact that neither has been inside the ring in years and everyone knows it’s Stone Cold.

I suspect this conversation topic is about to become popular again now that it is one of Oprah’s favorite things, coinciding with the release of her movie a Wrinkle in Time, based on the “timeless” book.

The great irony of writing a book about time travel is that nobody ever uses the technology to go read more books. Indeed, time travel will probably coincide with the death of literacy that MTV once foreshadowed but failed to fulfill.

Having studied many of the classics including all of the Terminator movies, both Bill and Ted’s, and every episode of Quantum Leap, my answer is clear: if I could travel anywhere through time, I’d go nowhere.

I simply don’t know enough about germs and disease to feel comfortable time traveling.

I would love to go back to 1776 and witness our nation’s founding, but around a third of all people living back then quickly died from smallpox. My understanding is that Americans can’t even travel to slightly less developed countries without getting afflictions of diarrhea, so I’m sure as heck not traveling through history.

I couldn’t even complete a game of Oregon Trail without dying of dysentery, I surely won’t be able to spend a fortnight with our founding fathers.

I’d also like to go back to meet Jesus. He seemed pretty chill and I’d appreciate more perspective on the whole “is he/isn’t he the son of God” thing. But Jesus had a massive following and was brutally beaten, hoisted onto a cross, impaled, and left to slowly die.

What chance would I have as an outsider with no followers who doesn’t even speak the language? No thank you! We should be thanking God every day that we don’t live back in that brutal society. Those goofy Romans aren’t laying a finger on me!

And pre-historic trips? Certainly not! One of my favorite things about living now is the zero-percent chance of being eaten alive by dinosaurs. I don’t ever want that number to change. Zero percent is the right percent.

The other side of this game is deciding whether or not to go into the future – perhaps to find a miracle cure for cancer or to be a modern-day Nostradamus. I’m skeptical of how effective this tactic would be as well. And terrified of landing in the middle of a nuclear holocaust, erupting volcano, or live taping of The View.

I’m not even comfortable popping in to visit family members unannounced, I’m definitely not just going to leap into a new time and space without at least some advance work to manage expectations.

Many people believe someone gifted with the ability to time travel has an obligation to go back in time and kill Baby Hitler. But even if I could get past my long-held opposition to killing babies, the responsibility for owning everything that happens after that date would surely make me go insane.

World War II was horrible, but at least we won in the end. Removing Baby Hitler wouldn’t have changed the combustible properties that lead to global conflict and this time, things could easily go the other way.

It can take me hours to properly format my spacing inside of a Microsoft Word document, I’m definitely not the right person to be charged with reformatting our global power structure. Even with limitless time, I doubt I’d have the energy for such a massive undertaking.

I’ve declared my germs and disease theory to my brother Dan and he had a very persuasive argument that I could at least go back in time to a moment where I was still alive (and presumably have the immune system to handle the environment) in order to place some strategic bets and make a fortune.

This the Back to the Future II theory. If anyone I’ve ever known is a Biff, it’s Dan.

This is very tempting but ill-advised. The people who take and pay out for big bets are the same people who make bodies disappear. I would imagine it is very easy to make a body disappear if it doesn’t belong in that time. PASS!

If you really want to do something today that may pay off well in the future, I’d suggest some government-secured bonds. It really is the mature decision.

But with my luck, I’d get charged with securities fraud and I’m pretty sure they don’t allow time machines in prison.

So, if I could go anywhere in time, this is where I’d stay. I have a nice house, a good life, a great wife, and hopefully, my health.

There are many things I wish I could change, and many things I wish I could see, but the current moment is comfortable with plenty to do and see right here. It took a complicated past to get us here and an uncertain future is our reward.

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