You Must Remember This

How about doing it all over, not only knowing then what I know now, but equipped with far better tools for navigating this strange landscape: now (unlike then) I'm handsome, clever, athletic, charming. Of course we know this fantasy is a little banal, even quasi-pornographic, but we'll waive that. Here we are, you and me, back in 1951, first day of high school, remade so as to attract admiration, fame, pretty girls. Who could resist such a chance, even if you had a choice, which we don't? What excitement lies before us? We can now experience the ease and confidence we lacked first time through, the warm glow of so many friends. We might even approach the fields of something like sexual experience, before only a fantasy, ever-present but somehow still dull. I may have neglected to tell you we are doing all this in East Liverpool, Ohio, not Paris. Still, it'll be some ride. Hang on.