Stephen King said in an afterword to his newest novel that he first had the idea for "11/22/63" back in 1972, when he was a young, unpublished novelist.

[caption id="attachment_1432" align="alignleft" width="197" caption="Traveling through time"]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/11-22-63-197x3001.jpg"><img class="size-full wp-image-1432" title="11-22-63-197x300" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/11-22-63-197x3001.jpg" alt="" width="197" height="300" /></a>[/caption]

At that point, King said, he didn't feel he had the expertise -- or the knowledge -- to write the book. So he set it aside, but never forgot the idea.

Now, nearly 40 years later and with nearly 350 million copies of his books in print, we finally get King's thoughts on the possibility of changing history by preventing Lee Harvey Oswald from killing President Kennedy.

It's a good story that will take its place in the pantheon of good novels involving time travel, even if the ending isn't all that surprising to those who like the genre. But what I found the most interesting was when King brought up the idea of watershed moments in history, moments in which whether a particular event happens or doesn't happen can have a tremendous impact on everything that follows.

If JFK hadn't died in Dallas, King opines, we might never have become as deeply involved in Vietnam. Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy might not have died in 1968, and Richard Nixon might never have become president. A lot spun out from that one moment at 12:32 p.m. CST on 11/22/63, when Oswald's third and fatal shot killed Kennedy.

But things like that are almost too big to comprehend.

What's clear to me is that there are watershed moments in people's lives as well, and sometimes they take us so much by surprise that we don't realize how important they were until years later.

If we ever do.

Of course it's silly to make a big deal about it, because unless our lives are a total mess, wishing for them to have turned out differently means throwing away what is good about them as well as bad. I believe they call it throwing the baby out with the bath water.

If my life had turned differently at what I now believe to be its watershed moment, I would have had a very different career. I don't know if my first marriage would have been a success -- or whether I would actually have fathered any children -- but I'm pretty sure I never would have lived in Los Angeles, or met Nicole, or become a dad to Pauline and Virgile. I think losing the first thing on that list wouldn't have been horrible, but I cannot imagine losing the three most important people in my life.

The person who might just know the vicissitudes of my life better than anyone is my closest friend Mick, and I would be willing to bet he could have five guesses and not identify my watershed moment. I don't think I understood it myself until just recently.

So for now I think I'll be coy and not reveal it.

I'll let Mick check in with his guesses -- month, year and event.

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