Compiling an original timeline for Butterfly Effect has already been recognized as a difficult step, largely because of the blackouts problem. However, if we work from the assumption that the blackouts and the time travel do not cause each other, but arise from the same abnormality and create the opportunities, we can begin to reconstruct that original history.
It begins with a kiss. We do not see this kiss until the end of the film, and then only in a home movie, but little Kayleigh kisses young Evan, and this sparks the beginning of their romance. From this point forward, they are drawn to each other.
Evan turns seven and has a blackout in school. It is during this blackout that he draws the picture of himself with a knife. This event is inexplicable, and may prove fatal to the film. The future version of Evan who later draws that picture also pierces his hands, which he does not do in the original timeline. However, that picture is what leads Mrs. Treborn to introduce Evan to Dr. Redfield, who suggests that Evan keep the journals. It thus must be that Evan drew something disturbing enough that his teacher alerted his mother and his mother had him examined. That it would be the same picture is beyond coincidence, and thus is a displaced event: no version of Evan would have drawn that picture and not pierced his own hands.
There is then a moment when his mother finds him in a daze in the kitchen holding a knife, and he does not remember how he got it. This too is displaced; it did not happen in the original history. The only reason for Evan to have that knife at that moment is based on his knowledge from the future. He did not have it at that moment in the original history. That will have only minor impact on events. He is already scheduled to see Dr. Redfield, and he has a blackout either way. What is not known is what he does in that blackout. His mother will be more concerned in a later timeline when she finds him with the knife, but simply finding him dazed, particularly given his father's history, will concern her.
If seeing him with the knife did not dissuade her from delivering him to play with Kayleigh and Tommy, seeing him merely dazed certainly would not do so. Thus we have the Robin Hood filming, and in the midst of this Evan has another blackout. It is apparent that Mr. Miller gets the boy to engage in inappropriate activity with his own daughter, the details of which are extremely important to Kayleigh and Tommy (who watches), but are only suggested to us, for obvious reasons. This has the effect of building the bond between Kayleigh and Evan, but also of destroying much of who Kayleigh would have been.
After this, Mrs. Treborn allows her young son to visit his sick father, a violently dangerous man in lockup. All is going well until Evan has another blackout. We would like to guess that the altered scene Evan creates when he returns to this moment from the future is what happened, but again that cannot be the original history. It might be sufficient, though, that Jason Treborn recognizes in his son the same condition from which he himself has suffered, and determines to prevent the kinds of disasters he knows from experience the affliction causes. That a dangerous and unstable man might attempt to strangle someone he recognizes as similarly afflicted is not surprising; that he would attempt to strangle the same person when that person exhibits even more obvious symptoms is less so. The blow intended to subdue the patient proves fatal, and Evan attends the funeral of the one person who might have been able to explain all of this to him.
We have managed to get through Evan's childhood, introducing him to his blackouts and the love of his life. The story will continue in our next installment.
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