Possible Paths

Sitting on my bookshelf is Stephen King's latest Big Book: 11-23-63. I haven't started it yet, partly because I am afraid. Not specifically because Mister King is a master of terror, but more because I enjoy his books most as anticipation. Once I'm halfway through one of his seven or eight hundred page beasts, I find myself starting to wince in fear: the fear of unmet expectations. The set-ups are always fascinating. The details are always crisp and timely. And somewhere before the hulking thing can make its way to the grand finale, it breaks down, usually from its own weight.
So periodically I make a pronouncement about how this will be the last Stephen King book, with that nasty taste of fizzled ending still in my mouth. Never again. Until I read a review that suggests that maybe this time, it will be different. That's why I put this most recent tome on my Amazon wishlist. That's why I'm preparing myself to enjoy two thirds of it. This one has to be different.
In the meantime, I have the seed of Steve's story to keep me interested: If you could travel back in time to prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy, would you do it? How would you do it? I will eventually read the book and find out what Stephen King thinks, but for now, I find myself wondering what I would do with a time machine. What calamity would I try and avert if I had a portal to the past?
Going back a few months to sell the Tsarnaev brothers faulty pressure cookers seems like a pretty good choice. Or maybe I could be the one American friend for older brother Tamerlan. Perhaps there was something I could have said to Dzhokhar to make him think twice before following his big brother down the mad bomber path. Maybe there's nothing I could have done or said. Maybe I could have killed them both. I would have saved three lives by ending two. It makes such easy mathematical sense in hindsight.
Smothering Mrs. Hitler's little boy in his crib? Poisoning Stalin's borscht? Dropping something heavy on the toddler Osama bin Laden? Change history? It makes me nervous to think about how stepping on that butterfly back in the dinosaur days could make things different for all of us. Of course, I have Ray Bradbury to thank for that little nugget. His books were always compact and to the point, with endings. Or maybe it was that Star Trek episode, "City On The Edge Of Forever," where Spock and Kirk chase McCoy back in time and they figure out that they have to let Joan Collins die to preserve the future. Bummer for Kirk, who had his phaser set on "stun."
Maybe I should try and learn more from the past than to try and change it.