Living With Regret

I’ve heard that you should live without any regrets, but I can’t do that.  I’ve done many things that I regret.  I wish I could take back every wardrobe choice I made from 1979-1989.  I wish I hadn’t taken that dare that I couldn’t eat two boxes of Girl Scout Do-Si-Do cookies in under five minutes.  It turns out that I could.  It also turns out that Girl Scout cookies taste much better going down than coming back up.  I regret paying fifteen dollars to see “Dude, Where’s my Car?” in the theater.  That’s fifteen bucks I’ll never get back.  Luckily, it wasn’t in IMAX.  That would’ve cost me $128.  $28 for the ticket and $100 worth of beer to make me forget that I was watching “Dude, Where’s my Car” in IMAX.  Also, I regret every last tequila shot I’ve ever taken.  I’ve never looked back the morning after and said, “I’m really glad I took that last tequila shot.  That was a good idea.”  And maybe it wasn’t a good idea that time in college when I let the really hot Theta that sat behind me borrow my calculator for the Electrical Engineering exam because she forgot hers.  I had to do all the calculations by hand because somehow my 20-year-old brain thought that generous gesture would give me a chance with her.  Shockingly, it didn’t. 

 Sometimes I daydream and wonder how my life would look if I could change just a dozen or so decisions.  These thoughts don’t keep me up at night, but there are things I wish I hadn’t done.  Luckily, I’ve avoided the major mistakes that cause some people’s lives to turn into a downward spiral.  Most of my regrets are little things that just make me feel stupid.  

Some of my regrets make me feel awful, and these are usually things I’ve said.  I regret almost every word that came out of my mouth in junior high.  My parents had every right to throw me out into the street for some of the things I said, and looking back, I wouldn’t have blamed them. There’s no law that says a guy has to be a smart-ass punk between the ages of eleven and fourteen, but I acted like I had no other choice.  In seventh grade, I called one of my teachers fat, and I knew that she was close enough to hear me.  It happened thirty-five years ago, and I still feel bad about it.  I know there are benefits of testosterone, but I’m not sure any of them are emotional.   

I regret every joke I ever made about someone riding the short bus to school.  I’m not sure why use this joke to refer to someone who isn’t very bright.  I’m not sure why we think it’s funny to insult people that develop slower than the rest of us.  But it isn’t funny anymore.  There’s a good chance that Audrey will be in a special education program, and she will probably ride the short bus to school.  I’m having a hard time laughing about that now.  I guess all jokes are funny until you or a loved one is the butt of it.  I feel like every time I referenced that joke in the past, I insulted my little girl, and it makes my heart hurt.  

It’s probably not emotionally healthy to regret something that you had no control over, but I regret the fact that my girls will never get to meet my dad.  I think they would’ve liked hanging out together.  Especially now.  Those who knew my dad best know that his social wheelhouse was hanging out with people under the age of four.  My mind’s eye can picture him being himself and watching Ella and Audrey laugh hysterically until they peed their pants.  But that’s never going to happen.  I loved hanging out with my dad, and I learned a lot from him, and I think my little girls would have, too.    

My Dad had a rough life.  He lost his father at the age of two.  He blew out both knees playing college football, effectively killing his chance at an athletic career.  He had too many business setbacks to count.  And he spent the last six weeks of his life in the hospital trying to recover from open-heart surgery. He was on a ventilator and dialysis the entire time, unable to eat or speak and constantly shaking because he couldn’t take his Parkinson’s meds.  But just like with every other unfortunate event that he experienced, he never once complained. No matter how bad things got at any point in his life, he never complained about anything. 

Audrey spent the first 112 days of her life in the hospital. She had open-heart surgery as well as sinus surgery, six blood transfusions and too many MRIs, x-rays and needle pokes to count.  After she got home, things got better but were far from ideal. She’s probably going to have to have a few more procedures in the near future to go along with her profound hearing loss.  The funny thing is, during her hospital stay, she never complained, just like my Dad.  Audrey rarely got fussy.  She would smile and giggle all the time.  She still does. She’s the best-natured little baby that I’ve ever seen, and she has every right to be anything but that. If anyone has earned the right to complain, she has. So did my Dad.  But neither of them ever did.  

Even though I miss my Dad terribly, I get to see a little bit of him every time I look at Audrey. I’m still not clear on the heaven/earth continuum, and I don’t know what my dad can see or what he knows about what goes on here.  Even though they never met in person, maybe Audrey somehow knows him better than I think.  They both seem to have a similar attitude toward life.  Maybe it skips a generation.  Lord knows she didn’t get that from me.