This was my George McFly moment.  Now if you are familiar with the film Back to the Future, you will know exactly what I mean.  If not, then a short explanation is required.

Young Marty McFly is sent back in time in the time machine (a De Lorean car) by his friend and mentor, one Doc Emmet Brown.  As luck would have it, he goes back to the fifties, at around the time that his parents were getting together.  Of course things happen that put their liaison in jeopardy, not least his mother Lorraine’s infatuation with him instead of his father (George).

This has the knock on effect of putting Marty and his siblings’ very existence at risk, so Marty’s energies are channelled into ensuring that his parents do indeed hit it off with each other.  Local heavy / thug / bully Biff Tannen has other ideas – he too would like Lorraine as his girl.  Anyway, as things pan out, George does indeed get his girl, by way of a swinging right hook on Biff.  Marty’s existence is guaranteed and he is able to travel back to the future.

So, my George McFly moment, although not involving a girl, did see me take a swinging right hook at a lad who had persecuted me during my early days at secondary school.  Unfortunately for me, I missed and people’s impression of me continued as it was.  Of course it is easy to look back and say that if I had connected that I would have been feted as a hero for standing up for myself, of course, things may not have worked out quite so smoothly for me as they did for George and Marty.

But using this incident as a starting point, what would I be like if I had smacked him one?  Where would my life have gone if I had laid him out on the ground?  And then there is the extension, where would I be if I had made different decisions when faced with the scenarios that I have listed above?  Who would I be if I had made different decisions when those scenarios came along?