I wish I was more confident as a kid, and talked to girls in ways they would actually find appealing, whatever that is at 16. It’s not Star Wars and cartoons, I can tell you that.
I also wish I hadn’t been so lazy (which I still am) and had actually gotten a part time job like my friends did, instead of buggering about with stuff that ultimately were inconsequential pursuits.
So, in conclusion: More talking with girls; and more working.
Dance classes & Acting. I would have liked to do more of those.
You really shouldn’t be sorry you missed this one. REALLY. Sand is … abrasive and it gets EVERYWHERE.
I believe I have said quite enough :o
Run away from home.
Shown more interest in the old people who lived in my neighborhood and asked them about their experiences.
There was an 85 year-old man who had emigrated from Ireland as a teenager in 1885. He hung around the store I used to hang around and he always wanted to talk about his youth, about the problems in Ireland, about coming to America, but I never listened.
Next to the grammar school I attended lived Jesse Burkett who played major league baseball from 1890 to 1905 and is in the Hall Of Fame. He used to sit on his porch everyday, anxious to talk about the old days, but I never bothered to stop and talk to him, not once! (He actually died when I was 15.)
The neighborhood drunk was always rambling on about his experiences in World War II when he had been captured at Corrigidor and gone on the Bataan Death March, spending the rest of the war in a Japanese POW camp. But I never listened.
Those links with the past have been gone for a long, long time, and I often regret I never seized the opportunity to talk to them.
I wish I had been living in an environment that included exposure to the arts.
I wish I had never lived in an environment that included Southern Baptist preachers.
I wish I had had the courage to tell my father to go to hell when I was a teenager.
Ah- music lessons, specifically piano. My parents paid for them for my brother and sister and neither can or does play today, but I asked for them and they assumed I’d lose interest like the others did (which I might would have admittedly).
Same here with my WW1 vet grandfather. At the time WW1 was far less interesting to me than Star Wars, so I have a couple of his stories but would love to have asked details (where was this other than “France”, or what battle are we talking about?). I think this is why a lot of people get into genealogy when they’re middle aged- the information repositories are all gone before they realize what they missed.
I’d have absolutely fucked up a couple of guys in my high school for messing with me. Looking back, I should have set a boundary as far as mockery and ridicule went, and defended that boundary with disproportionate force.
I’d have been much more respected, and definitely put me in the category of not-to-be-fucked-with for the remainder of high school. I went to an all-male school, so it’s not like it would lessen my stature with the ladies; if anything, being a sort of alpha-male might have been better than things were.
I wish someone’d explained that it would have been SO much easier to lose weight back then than later; I got a solid 2 hrs of hard exercise a day back then- if I hadn’t eaten like a horse, I’d have never stayed fat.
Me, too! My default answer for questions of this type is “I wish I’d gotten into more fights in grade school, middle school, and high school.”
I wish I’d learned healthier eating habits, and healthier exercise habits. I spent most of my teenage years in my bedroom, writing stories and hanging out with my friend (with whom I wrote stories, and who was also not interested in exercise).
I wish I’d pushed boundaries more with my mother, who was overprotective and treated me like she expected me to be up to something even though I’d showed zero inclination to do so (and was a straight A student not because I was pushed, but because I wanted to be).
I wish I’d tried pot when my friend (different friend from the one I wrote stories with) offered it to me. Only once, but that’s an experience I kind of regret never having, and at this point I don’t really want to anymore.
I wish I’d been a bit more outgoing and gotten involved in things like drama club or band. I was a nerd who pretty much didn’t do anything but study, write, and read (and watch TV) throughout high school.
No regrets whatsoever about sex. Didn’t have it, didn’t want it. And even if I had, I probably wouldn’t have done it since I had then and still have zero desire to have children.
This was a little before age 16, but I wish I had insisted on going to that arts school, where I could have been a real art fag instead of trying to reconstruct it all at age 29. I might also have maybe been out at high school and, who knows, had a few teenage romances or gone to the prom with a boy, or something.
I can’t complain too much, but I wish I had had an adolescence when I was an adolescent.
I wish I had actually done the work in high school, rather than coasting on schmoozing with th teachers and getting good test scores.
I wish I had know that the small horde of girls that liked me, liked me. I’m not saying I would have been a man whore, but knowing that someone found me attractive then would have been a life changing thing for me.
I wish I had avoided a friendship that lasted 15 years, and in the end hurt some of the best people in my life.
I wish I had been more outgoing, in an appropriate way.