That's a variation on "If I were starting college again at the age of 18, but with the knowledge and experience I have today, what course of studies might I take? What course in life?" (There's a difference between waking up one morning in an 18 year old body and waking up one morning and finding an old somewhat familiar looking fart sitting in the chair across the room who wants to have a heart to heart.)

I would choose self at 12, I think, the age my family moved from Edmonds, Washington, a bustling metropolis of perhaps 3,000 just north of skittles and fish Seattle in 1955, to Bronxville, New York, a small town just north of New York City best known for its gross percapita income and its anti-Semitism, welcome to the real world, thank you very much. Actually, we lived in Yonkers right on the border with Bronxville and had a Bronxville mailing address. If you've ever heard of Sarah Lawrence College (for women), it was just down the street about a mile and a half.

Writing about moving from some little shoe box town up the West Coast woods to the Big Apple could take the rest of the night, so I'll skip this part and get on with the advice.

There's a lot of stuff at the nickel and dime level I could enlighten myself on, a young woman named Donerine, for example, another named Nancy, but that wouldn't have been important and, in retrospect, those things worked out the way they were supposed to work out (Valerie might be an exception, but I doubt it.).

Now, sitting there with the younger self, I might say "there is no truth, all things are lies". Actually, I wouldn't. That was a phrase of my 30's, but this is serious, I'm sitting here on a mission to save myself from myself and any flippant remarks might get me the boot. Save myself from myself. Push me in another direction to change myself into someone other than myself. Why is this not ringing a sympathetic bell?

One chance in a million to change the course of my life and I'm sitting here having second thoughts. "Kid," to self says I, "don't eat the yellow snow, don't take the long goodbye. Kiss you mother on the cheek and know the reason why. Keep your tootsies warm at night and shut the door against the cold. Listen not to my advice, you've years and years before you're old."