Not Gonna Roll A 436,285,194,397,075 Again

A friend of mine recently Shared upon the Facebook a graphic, showing the odds that any specific person could have come into being. You can see it here. Spoiler alert: The odds are so small that they might as well be zero.

The point I'm about to make was inspired by just part of the chart, however. The part that says that the odds that your parents got together and had you, specifically, instead of a different kid, is 1 in 400 quadrillion.

Here's where it gets geeky. Here's where I talk about time travel like it's a real thing.

Maybe I'm alone in this, among my readers, but I have often thought about the possibilities if I could go back and do it over. I could double major in computer science and mass communications and be all set for getting into the web design biz as it was becoming a thing (though I was using the internet as early as 1987, the World Wide Web wasn't created until I was already about halfway through college, and I first heard of it about a week after I graduated.) I could buy Apple stock when my CompUSA co-workers were still insisting that Apple was not much longer for this world. I could bet on the last-place Twins and Braves meeting in the next year's World Series (assuming a 19-year-old would be allowed to place a bet anywhere.) Stuff like that. But even if I somehow got the ability to go back in time, with my 2011 knowledge, and do it over, I wouldn't. Because I like my daughter.

There is a lot going on in my life that's good, and most of it could be made to happen again. I met M at a specific time in a specific manner that would be easy enough to do again. But, as the aforementioned odds indicate, it would be pretty much impossible to ensure that PG, specifically, would exist in my new timeline. The... ahem... circumstances that led to her coming into being would have to occur at precisely the same nanosecond that they did before. I don't even know what day it was!

So no going back for me. I'm glad I came to this important decision, because it would totally be possible, otherwise.

While we're on the subject, this is also why Marty McFly and his siblings were doomed the moment he came into contact with his parents in 1955 in Back To The Future. There's no way Marty could have returned to 1985 and have anybody there know who he was.