First of all, let me just say that I know how ridiculous this sounds, and that you will never in a million years believe me. I am you, Ginger, in the year 2019. I know you aren't going to believe me on that so I don't know what the point is of me trying to convince you. I guess you can just file this letter in the back of your (our) mind, and keep it for reference. If it helps any, here's a thought. You got locked in the upstairs room and jumped out of the 3rd story window at age 6. I climbed through the window pane and sat out there on the air conditioner and planned my will in my head because I didn't have any fear or concept of death yet. Yes, we thought we were going to die and we jumped anyway. We didn't tell anyone this, we said we thought we would be fine after the fall. We were wearing the blue and gold sweatsuit pajamas.

Oh well. I'll just get on with the letter, you will believe what you want to believe. Truth is, the reason I'm getting to write this letter is because I won some stupid contest. I got to choose between getting a whole lot of cheese or writing this letter. This sounded more interesting, and that is pretty much the whole explanation. I could go into greater detail about the contest and how all this is possible, but for reasons I'm about to explain I won't.

After I chose to write the letter I had to have a serious monologue walking around my kitchen deciding what to write. I ran into a few philosophical obstacles.

The way I've seen it there have always been two theories to time. Those two would of course be the 12 monkeys theory, and the Back to the Future theory (You should really know this already, but maybe you haven't thought of it yet). In the 12 monkeys view on time, nothing can be changed. You can call it destiny or whatever dramatic word you want to apply to it, but the fact was in that movie no matter what the protagonist Bruce Willis tried to do to change the past the end result was the same. Everything that was going to happen already had. Or in other words, if I sent you this letter to try to change the past, then in the past I would have already gotten the letter and made the changes. Obviously I don't remember any letter, so that means that somehow this won't even make it to you (according to that theory at least). That's pretty disheartening.

Now let's look at this via Back to the Future. I send you this letter, explaining the "correct" answers to life choices that I've already seen played out. You chose a different path in life than what I've already done. What does that mean for me? Does that mean that I suddenly disappear, or am instantly tranformed into the completely different person that I would have become with different choices? Basically, by sending you this email I could erase myself completely. (what am I, after all, except an acculation of my memories?) I don't think there is ANYTHING that has happened in my life, no matter how horrible, tramatic, disheartening, or just downright fucking pitiful, that would make me want to have myself as I know me completely disappear. Even if this didn't cause me to disappear (or rip the time-space fabric as good ole doc would say), I could tell you to change some completely harmless detail like "Don't eat at Giro's, you'll get food poisening". Then while you're driving across town to a different restaurant you get caught in a three car pileup and end up dead way before 2019. There's no good news coming from that theory either.

So what's the point you ask? Well, the point is that this letter is pointless. I'm not going to tell you anything to change. This has got to be a great big teaser for you. Your future self writes you a letter, and then in our over-analystic ways talks herself out of telling you one single damn thing about the future. Sorry. You can call me a jerk if you want.

No wait, I am going to tell you one thing to change. When you win this contest 18 years in the future, just take the cheese. Make a sandwich or something. Sorry to waste your time.

Ginger