Reader Interview: One Single Change TODAY

One Little Push
One Little Push
Some ground rules on this post first: Your one single change cannot be an assassination, a kidnapping, an act of terrorism, or ANYTHING ELSE ILLEGAL. I so very much do not want to have the FBI visit me to ask for your email address or IP address, so will promptly and mercilessly delete AS SPAM any replies that break this rule. M’kay?

So, with that said, Let’s play “What Domino Would You Push?”

Today, real-world, if you could make one single change anywhere in the world, involving any ONE person, place, event, or situation—if you could tip over just that ONE domino—what would you change? What effect do you think this one change would have…and why does that change matter to you?

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30 responses to “Reader Interview: One Single Change TODAY”

  1. Maureen Avatar
    Maureen

    Couldn’t agree with you more and we still have a full month of this plus all of hate tv screaming at us what we should do and what we should think!
    If we became the mob and voted all of them out for new people hopefully there would be new ideas and solutions!
    Happy thoughts.

  2. Maureen Avatar
    Maureen

    Hey Holly
    Great question hope this isn’t too late I’m traveling and missed this but I know a big push… It is election time I am so sick of every politician black-balling the other guy and the amount of money spent on all of these folks spend to get their point across I believe would be better spent in many other directions. So my push would be to set an amount of money any one of these folks can raise and then run their campaigns on that! No more no less and maybe we would see folks getting to the issues instead of fighting!
    I would love to see that happen 🙂

    1. Holly Avatar
      Holly

      I’d just love to see two candidates that between them were worth going to the polls for. This year nationally, there are none.

    2. Maureen Avatar
      Maureen

      I am posting on my iPad forgive my incomplete sentence! I meant to say all the money these folks spend to get their points across. Then I should have said the money would be better spent in many other directions!
      After following my husband around the world for the past 26 years with the USAF we are buying a house reason why I am traveling and I hope this will be my last move! So I’m a bit excited my mind is all over the place but I loved your question and wanted to play!
      Thank you!

  3. Susi Matthews Avatar
    Susi Matthews

    ONE domino, huh? Hmmm…

    I wish I’d kept my mouth shut and not hit ‘send’ on that critical email that burned that particular bridge. It still hurts but I’ve moved on.

    Yep, my own big mouth and too passionate opinions.

    ‘Cause change only comes from within, right?

    But that was one big domino in my life.

  4. Amy Keeley Avatar

    Forgot to add why it matters. :/

    Because I was exercising constantly to improve my “line”, I ended up with tendonitis in both knees that was so bad I could hardly walk some days. It took months before I felt safe trying dancing again.

    Stupid, yes.

    I’ve been playing around with bellydance for the past couple of years and not only is it the most fun I’ve had dancing, it’s also helped me accept my shape.

    (I thought about making one small change in the world, but honestly, so many different events move the great moments in history that I wouldn’t know which one to change. Then, I thought about changing the lives of those I love, but the only event I’d want to change is also the one event that pushed my husband’s life and mine together in a way that made us compatible. So, we’re back to me. :P)

  5. Amy Keeley Avatar

    I would tell my eighteen year old, curvy self to go ahead and try bellydancing, instead of trying to look like the other dancers in my ballet class.

  6. Geraldine Ketchum Avatar
    Geraldine Ketchum

    If all the weapons and ammunition disintegrated, we might have our glorious leaders make some genuine efforts at negotiating peace. Having no bombs to hold over the enemy’s head might go a little way to evening the playing field. No suicide bombers, no reason to kidnap children to turn them into soldiers. After all, it’s a lot more difficult to kill someone by hand than by rifles, machine guns or explosives.
    I’d be willing to give up fireworks if the gunpowder turned into just powder, along with all the weapons. Couldn’t make things worse, anyway, could it?

  7. Lee Avatar

    The absolute one domino that I’d push is the one that had me so thoroughly indoctrinated by one religion when I was 19 that it affected a very key course of action in my life I would not otherwise have taken. That bitterly upsets me even to this day…

  8. Cheryl Avatar
    Cheryl

    Forgive my ignorance in not understanding your government hierarchy, but I’d like to convince the head of US overseas defense forces to recall all the US and Aus troops from where their stationed. Far too many of our boys are dying over there.

    And, I make no apologies for this statement: as an outsider watching for 55 years, I have long suspected the world might run better without so much “assistance” from the US.

  9. Texanne Avatar
    Texanne

    I would make Lee Harvey Oswald trip on the stairs going up to his sniper’s nest in the Texas Schoolbook Depository.

    JFK wasn’t the golden boy many people thought, but maybe he knew the secret plan for NOT getting us stuck in Vietnam, which was his baby, after all. Think of it! No President Johnson! Probably no President Nixon. Honestly, I am not seeing a downside for my domino. So many of my friends would have lived to be grandfathers, maybe, if this one change could have been made.

    1. Brian Cansler Avatar

      You should check out Stephen King’s 11/22/63. It looks at exactly that scenario in depth.

      1. Texanne Avatar
        Texanne

        Heehee! I’ll bet you Stephen King found the downside, didn’t he? Still, I’ve been wanting to try to understand horror–why in the world people like it, and how to write it. Thanks for the recommendation!

  10. Ieva Avatar

    There is this joke (one of my favorites) – copying it shamelessly from somewhere in the internet.

    A new monk arrives at the monastery. He is assigned to help the other monks in copying the old texts by hand. He notices, however, that they are copying copies, and not the original books.

    So, the new monk goes to the head monk to ask him about this. He points out that if there was an error in the first copy, that error would be continued in all of the other copies. The head monk says, “We have been copying from the copies for centuries, but you make a good point, my son.”

    So, he goes down into the cellar with one of the copies to check it against the original. Hours later, nobody has seen him. So, one of the monks goes downstairs to look for him. He hears sobbing coming from the back of the cellar and finds the old monk leaning over one of the original books crying. He asks what’s wrong.

    “The word is *celebrate*, not *celibate*,” says the old monk with tears in his eyes.

    That’s one change I would like to make.

    1. Susi Matthews Avatar
      Susi Matthews

      This is absolutely my favorite story joke, which, by the way, was told to me by the gentleman portraying King Henry VIII at the Renaissance Faire in Muskgee, OK. He happens also to be a minister and a great story-teller so hearing this from him had many additional levels.

      But to extrapolate the germ of truth from this joke would also contain my wish for change; that we would all choose to use kinder language, make less harsh judgments and give those we know more room for possibility. Too open-ended? Ah well, that’s just my Liberal hippy socialist sort of upbringing showing.

  11. Pogona Avatar
    Pogona

    Hmmm…can I *not* touch the domino? 🙂

    I would go back and find the first domino-event in the chain of domino-events that started my mother’s downward spiral into drug abuse and alcoholism that twisted her into the hateful, ungrateful, petty bitch that she is…and super-glue it to the goddamn table.

    Life would have been different and I wouldn’t be having angry-mother, or guilt-induced nightmares from finally leaving her in that state. Or changing jobs when she finds me. Arrgh! Going off on a tangent now!

    Too nasty? I’m sorry!

    1. Holly Avatar
      Holly

      Makes perfect sense to me.

    2. Geraldine Ketchum Avatar
      Geraldine Ketchum

      Quite a reasonable response to unreasonable behaviour. You can’t help someone who wants to wallow, no matter how hard you try.
      Frighteningly, changing that one turning point might only delay the result for a short while. Sometimes we’re just a disaster waiting for a reason to happen.
      I hate that you have to keep moving, though. Exhausting to say the least!

  12. Michelle Avatar

    I’d love to go back in time seven years, knowing what I know now, and do every differently from the night my ex broke up with no. Instead of wasting a year and a half pining after him, and making an utter fool of myself.

    But, that violates the rules. So instead, of the many losing lottery tickets I’ve purchased, I’ll change the biggest jack pot to a winner 🙂 Money fuels my self-publishing career, as well as pays for my wedding and the two kids we hope to have.

  13. "Kate" Avatar
    “Kate”

    If I could change one thing I would have want my brother back he died in 9/11 he was a firefighter

    1. Texanne Avatar
      Texanne

      I wish you could have him back, too, Kate. And the others, also.

  14. Holly Avatar
    Holly

    I’d go back two hours and NOT get sucked into reading e-mail. I would at this point be caught up on an additional three months of paperwork, and would not have incurred the headache that was NOT with me this morning, but that has resulted because I’m now stressed out about not having yet finished June.

    And that absence of headache would let me develop the series idea I woke up with at 5AM, and DID have the presence of mind to write down, and that is going to be both a blast to write, and is going to offer me a cool set of lessons for How To Write A Series, AND later on, How To Write Short Stories.

    Damn headache.

    1. Ieva Avatar

      I think you now have a whole lotta people rooting for you, for entirely selfish reasons. I’m one of them.

  15. Danzier Avatar
    Danzier

    I think, today, I would clip my keys to my belt as usual instead of being different and ignoring the niggling suspicion that *this* might be the day when my routines pay off.

    Following this, I would then *not* lock both sets of keys in the car. Would *not* incur the fees to unlock the car. Would not have a fight about the locked-in keys and costs. Would not be too late to school to print my paper. Would have the car for the day, thus avoiding a second fight. Would, in short, have a much better day. And maybe ice cream.

    And it matters because I’ve been kicking myself all day for having made a silly mistake that wreaked havoc on *someone else’s* day. I can deal with my mistakes when they only really impact me, but I feel awful when my consequences hit someone else.

    1. Holly Avatar
      Holly

      That makes sense to me. I’d definitely want that one back, too.

  16. Walter Spence Avatar

    The average IQ of the average person would be (at a minimum) 50 points higher. Think of the wonders we might then see.

    (And yes, no doubt there would be downsides as well. But I’d like to think we’d get past ’em.)

    1. Holly Avatar
      Holly

      Ummm. That’s seven billion dominoes. You only get to push one. 😀

      1. Walter Spence Avatar
        Walter Spence

        Ok. Not to burden what I suspect was intended to be a light-hearted thread with too much solemnity, but if I get to change just one single thing, then I want my brother Jamie back.

    2. Ieva Avatar

      If I’m not mistaken then the average IQ is, by definition, 100, because that’s how the IQ system works. So going back and saying to those guys who invented the IQ in the first place, and saying, hey, what if we set IQ average at 150, is a single and rather small change. (Although it would make people feel better about having an IQ over a hundred, and those below 150 wouldn’t know that it’s not even that high, so I think that’s a smart change. Think about the sheriff in Eureka! who was really proud of his IQ – “I did a test and almost made it 100%!”)

      1. Walter Spence Avatar

        Well, Leva, what I meant was that I wished the average human IQ would be the equivalent of the average IQ of those persons who currently measure 150 on said scale. That being said, I do understand your point.

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