We live in a thoroughly modern and fast-paced age, in which all too often our technological prowess runs far ahead of our understanding, much as a Chihuahua on one of those extendable leashes runs out into traffic and is squashed like a yippy annoying little pudding cup beneath the  harsh and awesome wheels of the merciless Ford Pinto of reality.  By which of course I mean to say, time travel can be risky business indeed, and whether you’ve got a stolen Klingon Bird of Prey, a DeLorean full of plutonium, or just a funky Victorian armchair with a knack for opening up controllable rifts in the space-time continuum, there are more than a few rules and helpful pointers which many people fail to take into account before zipping through the temporal aether and creating all sorts of wacky paradoxes and junk.  And so, assuming that many of you either already have, or will shortly be given by your future self, a time machine, I publish here a handy little list of things to bear in mind, should you happen to transport yourself to some other point in history.

            First, you have to know when in fact, you are traveling through time.  Happily, the best way to be sure is to look around you.  If there’s a bunch of clocks and movie montages of historical events going on, then you’re probably traveling in time.  Unless of course you’ve merely driven into the antique mall by mistake, which is still a perfectly decent fallback plan should you be unable to secure a time traveling phone booth.

Should you happen to go back in time and meet your ancestors, you must remember that while your parents will merely look like younger version of themselves, your grandparents and all those who came before them will look exactly like you/your sister/Leah Thompson/etc, except with hilarious old-timey accents and different hairstyles.  This is normal, and you oughn’t allow it to freak you out overmuch.  Also, they will all be hopelessly oblivious, and other than remarking that you seem somehow familiar, will completely fail to call you on the fact that you look exactly like your great uncle Zebulon.

            If you’re traveling in your time machine and like, your sunglasses blow out the window or something, make sure that when you go for them, you don’t reach out with the hand you wear your watch on, because the last thing you want to happen when you land in the late Cretaceous is have to try and figure out whether you’re still on daylight savings time or not.

            Don’t overdo things.  For instance, instead of going back in time and killing Baby Hitler, just go back and make sure that Teenage Hitler makes it into art school.  Also, while you’re back there, make sure that someone starts a band called Baby Hitler.

Most temporal physicists agree that there is at least an 80% chance that in the future, people will dress in the goofiest manner imaginable.  Also, all slang will be the most incomprehensibly silly gibberish that you have ever heard.  Should your destination be at some point yet to come, do your best to bear this in mind and try not to giggle too much when you see everyone walking around in foam rubber space trousers.

            The bad news, of course, is that the above rule holds pretty much constant when traveling into the past as well, and just about any time you end up in, you’re going to get laughed at like Jabba the Hutt at a line dance. 

            Remember: They are not the hell your whales.

            When you eventually run into a crazy evil dictator or funky barbarian warlord at some point, just remember that as soon as you can lure him into your time machine, he’ll become your friend, and you can take him to the mall for your history project with only modest mayhem ensuing (Modest Mayhem, by the way, being a modestly awesome name for a band).

            Make sure you check the local geology and find out which parts of your neighborhood were once composed of lava.  Try to avoid these if at all possible.

            Thus armed as now you are with this veritable fount of wisdom concerning all matters of extralinear temporal legerdemain in which you may happen to engage.  Use them wisely and you will most likely avoid such common pitfalls as dating your mom, running into morlocks, and assuming that in the year 2132 wearing your shirt collar up like a preppy will not be an offense punishable by death.  Also, if you’re going back to the early 20^th Century, make sure you get me tickets to the next Baby Hitler show.