Me: "Oh God! OH FUCK! I can't do all this again!"

I’m suddenly a 40-year old woman in the body of a baby boy. Overnight: the following things are true:

• I’m in Japan. My English is borderline-perfect, once my face and throat can express it. It’s okay, I was born to white parents who are English speakers, but they didn’t raise me with English. We’ll see where this goes in my new life.
• My wife, who I’ve fallen asleep to every night, is now 3-year old kid in Illinois. I will miss her deeply and I cannot even grieve without arousing suspicion. Her existence at this point in her life is miserable. I know what she’s suffering through and which address she’s suffering at. Even if I went to go see her, she wouldn’t know who I am. I don’t look like me. She also hasn’t met me yet.
• I know full well that I’m trans and I know that my mother and father are hostile to such notions, and I know there’s nothing I can even do at that point in time.
• Everything I have read, watched, and played doesn’t exist yet. There’s embedded cultural touchstones that I reference that don’t exist yet. I’m also a baby.
• Most of my favorite music doesn’t exist yet. I will hum songs by Hitorie, The Beths, South Arcade, Battle Tapes, and Emi Nakamura under my breath decades before they’re written. This is a problem.
• The technology I use to make my art doesn’t exist yet. Digital cameras at the turn of the millennium were ass.
• I’m still 40. I can’t pursue my hobbies and works. I can’t take pictures (yet). DSLRs don’t exist.
• One of my two strokes gets undone. My body moves somewhat easier. However, I still think and interact with the world like I’ve had two.
• The house I’m living in now hasn’t been built yet then.

In summary, endless culture shock. I would panic forever. My life would immediately be one of those television shows where suspicion keeps mounting against the main character and there’s jack shit anyone can do to stop it.

I suppose I could tell her that in sixteen years, 9/11 is happening and what transpires, down to Kevin Cosgrove’s phone call. She’d panic and try to contact the feds, and I’d just say that Bush already knows. It’s in the commission report that doesn’t exist yet.

That might actually radicalize them…

As soon as I am able I would wander into the woods and perish

The way I’m reading this is that I’m turned into a baby in this moment. Why is it everyone else is assuming time travel?

Depends on if it's de-aging or time travel.

If I'm just de-aged and left in the present I would try and become a real life Baby Herman from Roger Rabbit and go into comedy.

If it's time travel I'd try not to make the same mistakes but then end up making all different ones and ruining my life in new and interesting ways.

Genuinely?

I'd not be such a tremendous cringey dork as a kid.

I would not latch onto that one girl who did not give a shit about me.

I would fully avoid the one girl who did like me but then completely fucked me up.

I would move out of my toxic dickhead dad's house before he got my bedroom raided by police.

I'd buy a load of bitcoin when I saw it for like 12p and thought "nah, that's just for criminals, I don't want to be associated with that"

But then...

If I can't achieve those things while also meeting my wife and having the exact same kids that I have now then I would honestly not change a damn thing. Scars and all.

Grab boobs while i'm still young enough for it to be cute

I would rule the playground with my knowledge of Pokemon and distribute Mew to those whose dex languishes at 150.

plot of a horror movie: Grown up trapped in baby body for 1.5 years while fully conscious.

Spend 20some years dreading that I'm probably going to fumble my wife by knowing she's perfect for me

Are we talking baby present time or baby back when I was a baby?

Eat a nickel.

well if we're talking newborn I would freak out the butcher who circumcized me by telling him in perfect english I don't consent to this. I don't know if I could realistically get out of it but I would try.

I would now be a baby with the full knowledge of a graduate engineering degree and several years of industry experience, and the knowledge that I'm a trans woman, bi, and neurodivergent.

School would be a tragically boring breeze, and I would probably try to get into some accelerated "child prodigy" academic program so I could get through it quicker. One of the ones where you start college when other people are starting high school. By this point I would have started male puberty, so priority number one would be to go to the campus doctor and start my hormonal transition. It would frankly be amazing to go through only female puberty, and at roughly the right age even. I could expect to end up much more feminine since the skeletal changes are still possible at that age and I wouldn't have had the full effect of male puberty on my face.

I would take my time at college, still study engineering but make it easy on myself, enjoy being a college girl for a while, have my slut phase while I'm still young. Idk how far I would go with it but I would probably study something new, probably get at least a masters again. A PhD would still be way too much work for me.

After graduating it would just be normal life again, but with the body I've always wanted and a little head start in life, as opposed to being really behind like I am now. Maybe I'd even be treated better by my parents, being born with more emotional maturity than they've ever had, and with a mind even older than they were when I was born. I still wouldn't trust or like them. They'd still be bigots and religious weirdos. But maybe having a seemingly prodigal child who outperforms their wildest dreams might make them at least be nicer to me.

1. Buy into Bitcoin while its young
2. Become a Crypto Bro, shilling to hell and back
3. ???
4. Become Billionaire

Iknow this is just a joke but there’s a really good book along this premise. You only get your memories back at 4 or 5 though. The book is called “The First 15 lives of Harry August”.

I would definitely avoid some mistakes and start saving early. If this also involves time travel, I mine Bitcoins and keep them.

I'd do a lot of the same, but in different ways. I don't want to mess up and miss out on my pets and all the other wonderful things that have happened to me, but I would try to live a better/less fucked life.

Try harder in school, achieve some modicum of success so I'm not such a loser, and fix my biggest, less consequential regrets. Nothing that would be life-changing, but would make me feel less guilty at least. I would do more to help the pets I couldn't save (2 babies taken too soon) and I would try to just live more, and not be as much of a shut-in homebody.

Probably try not to become an alcoholic too.

I would probably shit my pants first thing.

Hope that all my medical issues aren't primarily genetic, I guess?

You know how people who go back in time always try to kill Hitler? Well, he was already gone when I was a baby, but someone else would not be...

Go suck on my mothers tits super erotically to freak her out, not breaking eye contact the whole time

There are quite a few women who said things like "I used to have such a massive crush on you at school/Uni/work" and I never realised at the time.

If I had a second chance, I would realise at the time.

Ok, calm down Leto II

The only thing I can think of is to force myself to learn a lot of languages since babies are better at picking up languages.

Being younger doesn't really do anything. Maybe fix/prevent my scoliosis if it does reset like that? But without also going back in time, my options are pretty limited.

Take better care of my teeth , never even think about engineering or technology and instead pick up dentistry defy my middle eastern parents and actually not eat after I take my thyroid meds , and actually start taking it from a young age realize that my parents don't care that much about me and get over it try to warn them about the 2011 Civil war and tell them not to put every thing they make in a house that is going to be obliterated in the war and actually try to persuade my Dad who is a top linguistic scientist to take the offers he received from Europe and migrate there before the war starts instead of dying in this shit hole of a society ! , for a guy that was the top linguistic scientist of his country and has a phd my dad was dumb in his decisions especially the ones regarding his family
not overly cook my brain by masturbating too much actually eat more learn machining from a young age as a hoppy , make my own firearm for self defence encrypt my diaries from a young age and not let my dad read them , even tho he managed to unencrypt them later and realized his son is just an uninteresting looser tell my both of my parents to take better care of my elder sister so she doesn't end up a stupid whore

Philip! Nooooo! My poor girl!

(will anyone even understand what I am referencing?)

My wife loves them (giggidy?) and they were really always meh for me. Then she has me try bread and butter pickles, at 42yo. Omg it's a completely different thing it's nuts.

Most of the time people post these questions, the answer is always really boring.

No of course I don't want to get turned into a baby, it isn't useful to me to be a baby, my current life would not be easier just because I was physically younger if I was like 95 then I guess it would be useful but I'm not so it isn't.

At least I've not been asked if I would travel back in time, because that one comes up every 15 minutes and the answer is always the same, buy bitcoin, again boring answer.

Transition

I feel like going back in time for it is kinda cheating. The real question is would you do it knowing what you know now but without knowledge of the future.

I’m busy right now, but yea if you told me I had to it’d be cool. New Game+ that shit.

Any timetraveler would probably get ton of bitcoins when they first emerge

Oh man...sadly, I would never have meet most of my friends, which would instantly suck. But I know it is predictable, but I would take advantage of bitcoin mining. I would annoy the fuck out of my parents to get to it. I would seek to get my hands on the internet as soon as possible!

And of course, if I make money on time, buy Pokemon Platinum with bitcoin.

I would use all the money to create passive income, and spend most of my time studying, exercising, taking care of my health, just to go to an university to get a career in AI engineering, knowing how important it would become. But I would try a different path to today's advanced AI, attempting to beat the big companies to it...

If I have to get turned back into a baby in place then no thank you, quite happy with life as it is. If we are going back in time there's ofcourse ample time for things like doing the right investments and retiring from work before even leaving school.

And I can find my wife way earlier in life.

I have had 3 dates of large lottery numbers memorized for a while now

Sleep.

Now there's a baby who knows what they want.

Spend more time with the grandparents. Make more effort towards learning languages and music. Try and have fun with being a kid.

Of course do the get rich stuff when it comes up. Might be able to convince my parents to let me try buying Google or Apple stock and I could buy BTC on my own.

The hard part would be figuring out meeting my wife and having the kiddo. These sorts of "what ifs?" get a lot less fun with those considerations.

I don't get the eat a nickel thing, but the genie version of granting this "wish" is that you're a baby today, not when you were born.

Same. Mom was a religious nutjob and dad ain't far behind. Nothing could incentivize me to relive that. That's just double trauma.

Oh great now I get to die to global warming

speedrun obtaining estrogen

Eat boogers

Cry

A second chance? I still haven't even figured out what to do with my first chance.

You get turned back into a baby but you retain all your skills and memory, what do you do?

Run away from home, walk the earth, avoid narcissists and psychopaths, create an emancipatory revolution provisioning each and all with all the emancipatory technology they could ever need, sublimating humanity to an interstellar (even intergalactic) species.

*/Dreamer*

I'd be a millionaire by age 10.

The second I am able to talk I am starting Jesus Cult 2.0.

Starting around 2 years old, I’m going to write all the songs that haven’t been written yet. And play bass on all of them.

I'll probably forget half, or most, of everything by the time I actually gain proper consciousness and start forming long term memories, so I suppose I'll end up doing nearly everything I did more or less the same

Look at this guy, going for the speed run.

Man, suckling is gonna be weird as fuck.

Travel back to the 90s! IT'LL BE TUBULAR!

Who