Like most nerds or at least pseudo-nerds I have fantasized about being able to go back in time, knowing what I know now, and right wrongs.

Over time, the fantasy has gotten increasingly less tempting.  The first problem came after I got married. I didn't want to do anything that might cause me not to meet and marry my wife. After I had children, I realized that the whole fantasy was really doomed because even if I could go back in time and make sure to meet my wife at the right time, I would never be able to have the exact same children I have since even a nanosecond later I'd have different results.

Like I said, I'm a nerd. Which part is the nerdiest is subject to debate: Having the fantasy at all or trying to resolve the time stream issues of wife/children as if this entire scenario were somehow plausible in the remotest sense.

Of course, now that I'm "rich" I'm told I'm just eccentric but let's be real, I'm a geek.  Relatively speaking, I'm ultra-cool now compared to how I was when a teen (which is, after all, the origin of these kinds of time travel fantasies to begin with).

Still, there are so many things I wish I could go back and change. Not the least of which is how I dressed. Picture this: short sleeve sweatshirts that were one size too small on someone who was very very thin. It goes down hill from there.

But the example that inspired me to write this was the wrong I did to my first girl friend. Her name was Sherry Blankenbaker.  Almost literally the girl next door. We had been "going together" (remember that term?) for over 2 years. She was beautiful. Nice. Kind. Gentle. But she also had parents who were very very protective (and in hindsight, for good reason). They wouldn't let her date. Not even to a dance.

What's worse, she went to a private religious school.  So you can picture this: I'm a 15 year old geekoid with this beautiful girlfriend who doesn't, as far as people can tell at school actually exist. I might as well been the kid that says "Oh yea, I have a girlfriend..she's in Canada!" 

We had hoped that when she turned 16, her parents would let up a little. Let her go to the dance. Something. Anything. But no, they still refused to let her go anywhere public with me. I don't think her parents had anything against me in particular (though they were certainly less restrictive with her future boyfriends). They just didn't want to let their daughter have too much freedom to get into trouble. 

We broke up for rather selfish reasons that I still feel bad about. It's not that I wish we had stayed together, gotten married had kids. Rather, I feel ashamed that I was so shallow. We were each other's first loves so to speak and after yet another time of her getting in trouble for sneaking off to see me we broke up.

But that's not the reason for the time-travel scenario per se. It's not that I thought we were meant to be, but rather by breaking up with her when I did, it ultimately led her to meeting the guy she ended up marrying who I knew, even then, was bad news.

That's because I knew this guy better than she did and knew him before they'd met.  They met through the BBSes (think of websites but available only in a local phone area). BBSes that I had introduced her to.  I knew this guy was bad news and I also knew how well he could pretend to be a nice guy. 

Now, maybe he's changed (it's been 17 years). He might be a great guy now for all I know.  But I knew then he wasn't and I never really warned her. I was too afraid of interfering when I should have told her.  I'm told they had a couple of kids and later divorced.  I don't know the exact details but if that's the case, I feel responsible for that since I could have warned her.  The guy was, at the time, so loathsome that the normally gentle T-man (who is the real power behind JoeUser, I'm just his front man, his lackey, his pawn who pays the bills ) actually wanted to do bodily harm to him. And believe me, she could have found any guy she'd wanted to (once her parents let her off the leash).

I don't know where things have gone since then with her. I lost track of things in our old neighborhood years ago. I was good friends with her brother and her younger sister was, in my opinion, had a gifted level of intelligence. Just one of those things where you think you should visit, and if you don't visit for long enough, it gets increasingly awkward to pop in.

So that's one wrong I would right. To set things up so that Sherry would have been on the path to find her real Mr. Right earlier. Or at the very least, help her avoid Mr. Wrong.  I wasn't her Mr. Right but I was the boy next door. The boy who should have been her friend.