This is week forty-six in my personal “If… Project” in which I answer questions from the book “If… (Questions for the Game of Life)”
There are 125 pages of this book, each with four questions. I plan to take one page each week and answer the questions as thoroughly and honestly as I am able. In addition, I invite you to answer the questions along with me, whether it be in the comments section, your own personal blog, or just within your own thoughts.
Perhaps in doing so, we will get to know each other better, but even more importantly, get to know ourselves better.
This week’s questions:
If you could eliminate one day from your past so that you had never had to live through it, which day would you erase?
I would probably eliminate the day that started with my having to turn down an incredible job opportunity and continued with me getting mugged on my way to the crappy job I had at the time.
If you could go back in time, as yourself, to live for one year at any point in history, what year would you choose, and where would you go?
For starters I would go back as my childhood self, not my current-aged self. I would go back to 1955 and somehow finagle my way into the opening day of Disneyland. And just to be a nice guy (and possibly creepy guy), I would somehow find a way to take my mother with me. She would be six years old at the time, and I get the feeling she never got the opportunity to do fun things like that as a child.
If you could have had one composer from history write a symphony for you, who would it be?
For some reason, I’m picking George Gershwin right now, for no reason other than I really like Rhapsody in Blue and think that a symphony for me would be a bit like that song. Both melodic and rhythmic. As wikipedia says, “The music ranges from intensely rhythmic piano solos to slow, broad, and richly orchestrated sections.” I like to think that my life has extremes like that as well, so something along those lines would be a good match for me.
Plus, in Fantasia 2000, that song was used in a segment that dealt with life in New York City, so that’s a positive.
If you were to receive a letter today from anyone you have known during your lifetime, who would it be from and what would it say?
It actually kind of shocks me to answer this question the way I am about to, but the only person I can think of receiving a letter from would be one from my father. And I guess I would want him to explain himself in it. Now that I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize that (even though I don’t think my mother vilified him at all) my opinion of him is somewhat based on what I she may have said as I was growing up. Yes, I have plenty of personal experiences with him myself to make my own opinion of him, but I would just like to hear in his own words what he has to say. Perhaps it will give me a new, and better understanding of who he is and why things happened the way they did. Not that I think it would correct any of the problems that have happened, but just bring a new perspective to them.
Those are my answers to this week’s questions. What are yours?