If you could edit your past, what would you change?

Originally asked

The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A

Repeated verbatim in The Guardian's long-running Saturday Q&A; two publisher-hosted examples establish recurrence.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

Recorded Sheena Easton said elsewhere, not written here
I read too much science fiction to mess with anything. I’d be terrified that, by changing something, my kids wouldn’t be mine.

The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 1 April 2017 source ↗

Others on this question

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Sadiq Khan Mayor of London since 2016
I would have had more time with my dad before he passed away.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 24 September 2016 source ↗
James Bay English singer-songwriter and guitarist
I couldn’t do it. I realised recently that all the things that have gone wrong are just as important as all the things that went right.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 9 January 2016 source ↗
Bill Clinton 42nd President of the United States, 1993–2001
There was another bill that I think did make a contribution to the crash that I wish I had vetoed for symbolic reasons. They would have overturned my veto. And that was a bill that allowed banks to engage in all these derivatives, like collateralized debt obligations, without sufficient collateral. Now, it passed overwhelmingly. Almost every Democrat voted for it, and we all wanted it because it reauthorized something I’ll call the Community Reinvestment Act. The Community Reinvestment Act, if the government enforces it, requires every bank in America to reinvest some money where they take deposits. And we’ve got 800 billion dollars of investment under it when I was president. Ninety-six percent of all the money that had ever been invested under it, going back to the 1970s, was in those eight years. See, it was a goldmine of broad-based prosperity, and I wanted it badly, and a lot of other Democrats did, and we voted for it, but it would have been overridden, the veto. And I wish I had vetoed it because I never believed — I had a big argument with Alan Greenspan. He said, “But these things only affect investors with 100 million dollars or more. They can take care of themselves.” I said, “Yeah, I don’t care if they lose 100 million, but you don’t understand. If 100 of them lose 100 million, or 1,000 of them lose 100 million, it can wreck the whole rest of the economy,” which is essentially what happened in the housing crisis. So I wish — it would have become law anyway. I wish I had vetoed that and sounded the alarm.
Recorded Academy of Achievement interview source ↗

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