The road not taken, a MMP

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Sometimes you have to look in the rearview mirror of life.

Some of ya’ll may remember that I have become, shall we say, a little too familiar with the Medical Mafia a few years ago. This led, in a roundabout fashion, with me being back in school. At the beginning of last quarter, I found myself in an Ethics class. Alas, it was being taught by a Unethical megalomaniac, and I bailed for Marketing in the middle of week two. This was sad, because I got a look at week three’s assignment: write a letter to yourself in your senior year of high school, fixing your future screw-up’s.

In my case, it would have arrived two years too late.

In my case, the cusp came on 6 Feb 1978. Tenth grade. The day dawned clear. I delivered my papers, a somewhat lucrative job that generated enough money to send me to Mexico three months later for a week, and took the bus to school, passing a few lonely snowflakes of the way into the building. Two hours and forty five minutes later about 217 trillion of the snowflakes friends had arrived, there was north of 4 inches on the ground, school was dismissed, and the mad scramble home had begun. I could just tell that this was going south and sideways at the same time, so I stopped at the school photo lab and grabbed a bulk film loader with 100 feet of film and the cans to load the film into. It took four hours to make the mile long trip home.

It was two weeks later the school reopened.

I was in the darkroom starting to print the 20 rolls of film I shot on the unscheduled vacation when I smelled something. Something real GOOD. Now I don’t know the last time you have been in a darkroom, but good smells and fixer do not go together. Good smells and a cute senior girl with long brown hair down to her butt however DO go together. Fast forward over the year to our becoming friends, eventually going to the same school as my friend in the dark, which let to my meeting my wife, and 14 years later, my son.

Now with the so-called wisdom of age, seeing that my birthday, the one with the colonoscope, is due in 48 hours, I have to wonder. Would I change anything? If I had been standing one enlarger away, my entire life past that point would have been different. Such a minor change would have major changes.

So what say you? What minor change in your life would kneecap your life today and turn it right around?

2

W00T! First!

3

If I hadn’t been assigned the seat i got the 1st year I had season tickets, I might not have met my hockey friends, and they’re the ones who pushed me to be more social. Also, I smashed my foot on a box last night. It only hurts when I uses it.

4

Good Mornin’ Y’all! Up and caffienatin’. YAWN ‘Tis 58 Amurrkin out with a predicted high of only 78 for the day. It’s Autumn! What am I doin’ up now on a day off you ask? Well, for starters, Ima take twuck in for an oil change this mornin’ and want to be there when the place opens so I can get in and out sooner rather than later. Plus I need to go grocery shoppin’ so might as well get it over with. Yeah, I live on the edge.

Alien great OP! How did future wife happen to be in that darkroom? Was she also developin’ pics? Off hand, I wonder if admittin’ to myself the fact that I’m gay early on, say in high school, would have made any difference. Who knows, right?

Ok, now I need more caffiene and should feed rumbly tummy. Also, I should get on the stick and purtify if I want to be at the oil change place at seven-thirty.

Happy Monday Y’all!

ETA: Just read this in the last MMP. Congrats Apes! You should also announce in this MMP so everybody can catch up.

5

Third! Well, technically, since Doggio posted twice!

Writing a letter to myself would probably not have worked as I am terrible at taking my own advice. Most of the important events have been influenced by house moves and by other people - I suppose if that hadn’t happened then my life could have been very much different. Mostly, I should just have tried harder.

6

My road not taken may be a story I’ve told before here, but what the heck…

In high school, I decided I wanted to be a foreign language teacher - initially French and Spanish, then adding Russian and maybe German to my resume. I enjoyed languages and I was pretty good. Much excitement ensued when I was accepted to my first choice school and even got a teensy scholarship to boot. Excitement fizzled when I discovered that college wasn’t as cool as I’d hoped - it was pretty much like high school, but with different faces and fewer rules. After 2 months, I was fed up, altho I did hang in there for 2 semesters.

As April and May 1973 rolled around, I started combing the classifieds for a job, but I wasn’t qualified for much of anything since I never took any typing or shorthand classes. I went on one interview, but it sucked big time. Since the summer of 1970, I’d worked part time for my dad, doing menial clerical stuff, being a PBX operator, opening and sorting the mail, and occasionally acting as courier to get signatures on documents accompanying shipments to certain countries (Dad worked for a foreign freight forwarder - an export broker.)

At the time, new hires got $95/week (as a part-timer, I got $2.25/hr) and I asked my dad about coming on full time. It wasn’t that I loved the work, but it was familiar and I was timid back then. I thought my 3 years of part time experience made me worth $100/week. Dad didn’t think so. I was not happy about that, and it led me to a Navy recruiter’s office which launched me on my eventual life path.

I was on my own, sorta, making my own decisions, living with my own mistakes, and generally having the time of my life. I learned all sorts of new things and had opportunities that never would have occurred to me had I stayed home. Who’d have guessed I’d grow up to be a real engineer!!! I never did ask Dad why he balked at the extra $5 per week, and I never thanked him for that. Turns out he forced me to choose my road, and my life has been quite the adventure ever since.

Oh yeah, I’m at work today, even tho it’s a Fed holiday. Since I don’t get holiday pay and **FCD **has a big design project to deal with, we came in. So I’ll wish you all a Happy Monday and dive into my own pile of tasks.

7

The plane not taken…

It has been many years since I’ve mentioned this here but I was once bound for the Peace Corps. I even made it as far as taking the plane from Akron to Pittsburgh and was waiting for the plane to D.C. when I had an experience that seemed like an ‘out of body experience’ where it was like I was actually watching myself go forward to the counter and ask if my luggage could be removed from the plane so that I could turn around and go back home. Which is actually kind of funny because they said yes but it actually went on without me and I had to wait a few days for it to come back. But what if they would have said no, would I be in some exotic land today? :smiley:

I don’t regret my choice for one single moment. I have an old friend who actually did end up going to the Peace Corps and sometimes I wonder how my life would have been if I were her but I certainly wouldn’t change a thing. All the people that I love are here and I’m glad that I didn’t leave them behind.

All that being said, I’d better get moving if I’m going to make it to water aerobics. Hope everyone has a good day and congratulations, Arrr!

Sorry about your foot, doggio and I hope you can meet one of your lovely ladies. :slight_smile:

8

So many things I’d change given the chance. The first thing I’d change is I’d have forced myself to get through physics, telling myself how fascinated I’d be with it in just a few short decades. Then I’d tell myself to stay away from a certain a$$hat over whom I obsessed for far too long. Then I’d tell myself to grow a spine and be more “there” for my sister in her last few months. Lastly, I’d get myself some decent talk therapy so that I didn’t dive head first into my two addictions: eating and spending.
I often wonder where I’d be know had I been able to steer my teenage/twenty something self properly.

Other than that, blurb. The work day begins.

9

Hi all. I’ll share my story later, but I wanted to say that I miss youse guyz.

I’ve been a bad Mumper. :frowning:

Every week I intend to keep up with what’s going on because I care about everyone here. Then the thread takes off, I haven’t kept up and I feel like I can’t just pop in and say a quick “hello” when there’s been lots of life stuff being discussed that I’ve missed. So, I wait it out and try again the next week.

Work and the move has been overwhelming and I feel like I barely have my head above water. Our old house is not on the market yet- we’ll be lucky if it’s 11/1.

It’s mostly good, but very very stressful and I’m struggling to email old friends, see family and keep up here. So I’m thinking about y’all and doing the best I can, but my best kind of sucks right now.

Sigh.

10

**Soapy **- first of all, visualize me shaking my finger at you sternly. Now - you just pop in here when you want to. For heaven’s sake, you know discussions here are random and out of control. So don’t try to be all proper and polite. Just say hi so we know you’re alive. And if it really bothers you that much, that bring snacks when you say hi.

Sheesh, woman!!! :stuck_out_tongue:

OK, I’m going back to my drawing. I just needed to give my eyeballs a break…

11

A letter to my 17-year-old self? Hmm. Well, the first thing I’d have told myself would have been to transfer to another college after my freshman year. The college I picked was small and cozy and entirely too safe. The program didn’t push me to develop my skills. Second, I would tell myself to take a hell of a lot more chances, to become involved in more activities, and to try more things. It’s easier to do new things when you’re in your late teens and early twenties than when you’re 40. It’s easier to be broke when you’re in college than when you’re a responsible adult.

12

Sometimes I wonder what my life would have been like had I gone to a different college. I was accepted at Dartmouth but decided to go the University of Illinois (Go Illini!). I also wonder what path my career would have taken had I stuck with my major of agriculture and not changed to liberal arts, giving me a useless degree and forcing me to get my master’s in library science.

Back to the world of reality. I got a new door installed between my kitchen and garage. The old one was beat to hell, didn’t lock and the knob didn’t turn. Now there is a pristine, 6 panel door with a knob that turns and a lock that locks and I love looking at it and turning the lock. Doesn’t take too much to thrill me.

13

Home from oil change and grocery sto’. Did I mention I have bean soup goin’ in the slow cooker? MMMMMM… bean soup with a big ol’ ham bone and some chunks o’ ham just for fun.

Also, I have a really nice chuck roast that I’m about to cut up into chunks. It shall become beast stew which I shall get goin’ as well. I figure a day off, so why not make stuff. We’ll have bean soup for dindin one night, beast stew another night and I’ll put some of both in the freezer for later. Sounds like a plan.

Also tonight is Vestry meetin’. Two more after tonight and I’m officially done with my tour of duty. :smiley:

On to beast stew assemblage!

14

Swampy, that was the edited version. Long version includes Laurie in the darkroom, following her to School one, getting flung into the student paper, befriending the editorial staff, and the boyfriend of the Editor-in-chief coming over to swim in my family’s pool 3 seasons later, with a cutie on the back of his motorcycle, who needed help for her FORTRAN program [yes, that dates it…]{commas in your database, REALLY dear?}

Add a decade of chasing each other, and there you have it. Laurie and Mrs. V. have met, but I haven’t kept in touch—Laurie if your out there, drop me a note. Mrs. V swears that she saw me earlier than that, but how my younger self missed her is a mystery.

15

I sat in the car for 3 extra minutes because you do not turn Bowie off.

16

This is your life-changing event and/or advice to your past self?? ;):smiley:

17

will do

So, on topic, if I could tell myself anything? It’s hard to say, because even tough I have been through some seriously tough times, I think they all made me who I am, for better or for worse, and I wouldn’t want to change much about my life. Maybe tell myself that food isn’t the answer to my depression and to watch my weight better, and that breaking up with my boyfriend in college wasn’t really the end of the world and it wasn’t worth doing what I did to try and end it all. It gets better, even if it doesn’t look like it at the time. It would have saved me a year of aggravation and needless mandatory on campus counseling sessions. Those were a joke,:rolleyes:

18

Yes. :smiley:

Congrats!

19

Thanks soapy :smiley:

20

I applied to, among others, Boston U for a PhD in Chemistry. They were among the few who responded, but instead of sending me information on their PhD program, they sent information on a double Master’s (ChemE and MBA) from MIT. I drooled over it but there was no way in Hell I could pay for it and, not knowing that someone from my school had automatic admission into MIT (this agreement is over now), I doubted they’d even let me darken the steps of their entrance, much less actually walk in. I didn’t understand why Boston U had sent me that at all.

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I’d mailed back (snail mail! This was in 1993!) asking “uh, this is real pretty, but there’s no way I can pay for it… can I get the information on your PhD program please?”

As for letters to my 17 yo self? “Your mother is a bitch. It’s not you, it’s her. Stop trying to please her now, you’ll save yourself over a decade of pain. And when you graduate and leave for your first job, don’t get a phone: contact by mail exclusively. Oh, and for Calculus I: Bolzano’s Theorem.”