Prompt 3
(from Chapter 1: Time and Place):
What past decade or century would you consider your favorite and why? Do you think you’d be happier living back then or in the present day and why?
Answer:
Let’s start by ruling out a few centuries, like those from four billion years ago when the world was all poison skies, seething oceans of acid and generally quite inhospitable to life*. I’m pretty sure I would not have preferred living back then because your life would be over in a few seconds.
I’ll also rule out eras like the Dark Ages for obvious reasons.
That still leaves plenty of decades and/or centuries to choose from, so I will narrow my focus further, to the last century. Surely there’s one decade from back then that would be totally awesome to live in versus today’s world of myopic politics, global warming and reality TV.
1900s: Not all of them, just the first ten years or the aughts as they call them. This decade saw the birth of powered flight, a pretty exciting development. Early powered flight mostly consisted of crashing and death, which dulls the excitement a little. I’m also pretty sure a lot of people still got scurvy and polio and died by age 30, just like in Logan’s Run. Pass.
1910s: I remember this decade for two things: The Titanic sinking and World War I. Pass.
1920s: A giddy, freewheeling era if you believe movies set in the 1920s. This was also the time of Prohibition but since I don’t drink booze that wouldn’t affect me. No TV would almost be a bonus. I’d consider this decade except I’d be afraid of getting shot by gangsters because they were everywhere, right?
1930s: Would you want to live in a decade known for something called The Great Depression? Neither would I.
1940s: World War II was a bigger but not better sequel. Pass.
1950s: Prosperity and the rise of the nuclear family. Radio, TV, movies, cars with gigantic fins and grilles. The birth of rock ‘n roll. It was a crazy, groovy time. Unless you weren’t white. Also not a particularly enlightened era. Pass.
1960s. A time of turmoil, war, assassinations, peace protests and moonshots. I actually lived in this era for the first six years of my life but didn’t particularly experience any of the aforementioned things. Would I want to as an adult? Maybe for a week, just out of curiosity.
1970s: I was there once already. Once was enough.
1980s: Where all the bad taste and terrible music of the 1970s continued, but with more synthesizers. I was an adult in the 80s so this doesn’t really count. That also rules out the 1990s.
In review, the last century sucked. We might have a lot of problems here in the early part of the 21st century but we also have electric cars, gay marriage and the ability to order anything–anything–online and have it delivered to your doorstep. The good outweighs the bad, at least for now.
My answer may change in ten years if Vancouver is fully submerged under the Pacific Ocean.
* this may not be an entirely accurate description but it nonetheless captures the essence of “you wouldn’t want to live here because you would actually die”
[spoiler title=”Explanation of this exercise” icon=”plus-circle”]I am using the prompts featured in 1,000 Creative Writing Prompts, Volume 2 (Goodreads link) to write ultra-short stories that are no more than a few paragraphs long. I will work through the prompts in order. After that, I will perhaps have a party of some sort.Sometimes instead of a story I will simply answer the questions (most of the prompts are in the form of questions).[/spoiler]
