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…

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?

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

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.

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

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

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”.

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

I would probably shit my pants first thing.

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...

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.

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

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.

Transition

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

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.

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