Note to readers from the future: if any of you should ever invent time travel, first of all, please do not do a Google Maps search for some town called Hill Valley and try to recreate the events of the “Back to the Future” trilogy. I love Marty and Doc as much as the next guy, but I don’t know how well humanity is going to fare if our motivation for making colossal scientific discoveries is rooted in “wanting to make a really meta YouTube video.” (On that same note, should anyone out there invent a Death Star, don’t start a search through NASA files for anything called “Alderaan.”)

And one more thing: please do not, under any circumstances, come back to my time, take me hostage and force me to go back to the 1970’s. Because, as this odd, retro public service announcement suggests, everyone in the 1970’s has VD and is plotting to share it:

The tone of this ad, something akin to “Free to Be You and Me With VD,” is disturbing – it sounds like VD is something you want – that nice lady at the flower shop has it, after all! Problem is, once you’ve figured out the ad has been misleading you, it’s too late, you’re in too deep. Which I guess is its point.

Anyway, a list of 70’s people that time travelers should apparently avoid sleeping with and/or offer a little penicillin:

  • women dressed like extras from the film adaptation of “The Great Gatsby” who may or may not be suffering from chronic ennui;
  • shut-in germophobe violinists in white suits;
  • chatty librarians who may or may not be Bea Arthur’s cousin;
  • Shelley Duvall’s younger sister selling Avon;
  • that pregnant lady in your apartment building who always smiles – seriously, she’s pregnant! Why not think about her needs for a change?!?
  • Jack at the corner grocery – and you might want to wash the produce, while you’re at it, too;
  • the woman who teaches all those park district dance classes; the one who sometimes mispronounces basic terms like “en pointe” but everyone is too polite to correct her;
  • the third grade teacher? You shouldn’t be messing around with her anyway. David Lee Roth would get jealous;
  • florists who look like TV’s “Rhoda”;
  • anyone laughing while walking out of a pond, lake or ocean, because the disease has clearly already gotten to their brain and rendered them unable to shiver uncontrollably, the only correct response to swimming at a beach;
  • your Introduction to Sociology professor;
  • young children;
  • that guy a couple houses down who started running after his wife left him and now all he does is run and talk about running;
  • the winner of the Preakness;
  • twentysomething couples cast for dream sequences in David Lynch films.

Anyway, I hope this helps. And If anyone who remembers the 70’s recalls seeing a group of people huddled in the corner, yelling “GET BACK! I DON’T KNOW YOUR RELATIONSHIP HISTORY!” when anyone walks by, drop me a line – I’d like to know that I made a difference.