Did I do that?

Task 25, June 20 to June 27

“Life moves on and so should we.” Spencer Johnson

Regrets. Ok, I want to talk about this whole “regrets” thing. A long time ago I adopted, as a working principle, the phrase, “you won’t regret things you did, you’ll only regret things you DIDN’T do”. Not only did I take those words to heart and weighed decisions based on them, but I also, solemnly, told my children to live by them as well. (I should state, right here, that I also adhered to the adage “no sense makes sense”, but i didn’t tell this one to the kids, because as much as I admired its logic, it’s hard to justify the circumstances of which they described, much less the sanity of their author…)

But recently I received an evite to an alumni event at my college alma mater, the Harvard of western Ohio, Bowling Green State University, set in the picturesque town of Bowling Green, where the townies were friendly and bars didn’t ask for i.d.’s, at least in the mid-70s; but as i perused the invitation I realized that a person that I dated when I was a senior (let’s call her Linda), was chairing the event. That gave me pause, as our break-up can be best described as contentious…The circumstances were these: after graduation, Linda went to her family home in Chagrin Falls, and I went back to my hometown and I was so desperate for work that I ended up in the stockroom of the local K-Mart, which can literally be described as hell on earth. Linda and I talked by phone (precluding smoke signals, that’s how you long- distance dated in those days), but I didn’t tell her that I had decided to drive to California to see my friend Barry–and I was going with my old dorm mate, Tom, and I wanted to break up with her before I left. But how to break up? After all, I was immature and chicken shit, so (If there had been texting in those days, that’s how I would have done it) I came up with a quick and dirty plan. Driving west toward Cleveland on our way to Fountain Valley California we stopped at the mall where I knew Linda was working behind the counter of a Zale’s jewelry store–I walked up to her, ignoring her merry “Oh my God, what are you doing here?” and announced it was over and sayonara. At first she was puzzled, then mildly pissed, and finally–as angry as a proverbial wet hen (I wonder if a pissed-off chicken gets as “mad as a Linda”...) and she threw a ring box at me as I backed away. At the time I was relieved–giddy really–that I had avoided a heart to heart with her, but as the years passed I came to regret the whole thing, especially the mall break-up.

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So there you are–or there I am–regretting something I DID, and wishing I HADN’T. Which is the exact opposite of the credo that I purported to live by and taught to my children. And once that truth penetrated my brain and my wall of denial, I began to think of ALL of the things that I regretted. A few examples:

–I regret the way I treated my mom. I was a certified brat, and I specialized in annoying her to no end, as evidenced by my non-smiling face in every photo taken in the 1960s.

–I regret drinking the tequila that caused me to shit my pants in the back seat of Tommy Smith’s car.

–I regret worrying about my career more than I worried about my kids.

–I regret not flossing in my 20s. Now, I’m a flossing fool.

TASK:

What are your regrets?