Dr. Laura,
Born at 80 and working toward 18 at first sounds fun or perhaps intriguing, but in reality it's analogous to "If frogs had wings they wouldn't hit their rear ends every time they jumped."
Think about it for just a minute or two; by the time you become an octogenarian, you have built up a rich reservoir of experience, knowledge and, one would hope, wisdom. Now, instead of the pleasures presumed in your premise of becoming ever more healthy, strong, virile, agile, charming, etc., you will really have nothing toward which you can look forward. You will already know how a deal went down, how you lost your savings, how you cheated a friend, who you loved and perhaps divorced, how your children acquitted themselves, who won the championship ballgame, and hundreds of other daily activities. These were the things you looked forward to with anticipation, fear, love or "the wonder of the unknown" that you will never again enjoy because you already experienced these feelings.
Yes, it's part of the human condition to engage in the "coulda/woulda/shoulda," but we can't go back in time to fix mistakes, wrong turns, etc. You have to view this construct in the context of the age-old fantasy of going back in time to change one thing, but taking that to reduction ad absurdum, and dealing with the consequences simply isn't worth it beyond a whimsical exercise that would quickly reveal its utter absurdity.
Chuck
