If you could go back in time .... when would it be and why??? - 1994.
I was 15 at the time. It was the year before I got baptised so Watchtower hadn't yet become a pain in the ass.
I also had lots of friends outside the cult, boys and girls I grew up with.
I stood 1 inch shorter than I stand today but I was about 60 lbs lighter. Younger, 60 pounds lighter ... I was as fit as a fiddle, with no excess fat. I played lots of football. I could play for hours and still run 3 miles at a fast pace at the end of the same day. One of my non-JW mates had a German Shepherd-mix called Sasha and I remember racing her. He threw Sasha's tennis ball and the race was on! She beat me but I wasn't far behind. With my low body fat percentage, energy, conditioning and the confidence/arrogance/stupidity of youth I genuinely thought I had a chance of winning.
The sun was always shining that summer and I remember the World Cup (USA '94).
Some of my non-JW mates listened to jungle and happy hardcore music so sometimes we'd listen to that kinda stuff. As for TV shows we watched a lot of Red Dwarf.
There were also about 5 or 6 really gorgeous girls about my age in my circle of mates so it was nice for a 15 year old boy to hang out with them and get the odd kiss or hugs.
Also in September of that year I did my school work experience at the Natural History Museum. I've always liked animals, fossils and dinosaurs so that was great. I was put in an office in the earth sciences department, before it was redesigned and the escalator and planet earth were installed. I actually saw print-outs of the plan for that particular exhibit.
I remember going in my lunch break to the museum's bookshop. I picked up a definitive volume on the great white shark and started reading. My lunch break was an hour but I made it back to my department over 2 hours later. They were cool about it ... some of them had lunches in the pub anyway! ... I still remember the name of the head of my department - Jacqui Staerk.
Also in my department there was a cute Polish woman with brown hair cut into a bob, plus there was a cute British woman with long, curly hair. When you're a teenage boy with raging hormones you kinda notice stuff like that.