I wish I’d made an effort with Her back in high school. Not because I think it would have worked out - I know it wouldn’t - but simply so that it wasn’t still unrequited. I haven’t seen Her in decades. I know with absolute certainty that I’m with the right woman now, and that Her and I wouldn’t have lasted a week. She wasn’t even interested in me. But perhaps if I had somehow actually gone through it, She wouldn’t be still popping up in my dreams every few months.
Stupid brain.
I regret not realizing much, much earlier that I could lose weight and keep it off. I was 29 when I started losing weight, and even though I’ll never be skinny I can maintain a normal, healthy weight for the rest of my life as long as I’m mindful. But who knows- I probably would have found some other reason to loathe and abuse myself in my 20s. I wish I could have figured out faster that I’m not such a bad person.
I’m sorry I didn’t try harder to get an apartment in the city when I moved to New York in 1980–but then, if I had, today I would probably be looking longingly at the nice quiet suburbs, so there you are.
And I rather wish I had been a little sluttier when I was young and cute. Mind you, I was *kind *of slutty and have some nice memories. But my mother always told me, “Never go home with a man you’ve just met, he will turn out to be an axe murderer.” So I said “no” more often than I’d wished, and now it’s too late to be slutty.
I’ll bet out of all those men, only three or four would have turned out to be axe murderers.
Axe murderers, are beautiful lovers
Axe murderers, they understand
I’ve been around some, and I have discovered
That axe murderers know just how to please a woman
-Ronnie McDowell
Damn. Y’see?
Here’s a somewhat lighthearted regret.
I was at the 1997 (?) Sugar Bowl game between Florida and Florida State for the mythical National Chapionship. I’m an FSU alumnus.
FSU lost pretty badly. But hey…I’m was few years out of college, and in New Orleans around New Years, so I went to Bourbon street to party.
I found a T-Shirt shop selling FSU Championship T-Shirts. I guess they had them printed up for both teams, and were dumping the losers cheap. I talked about buying one, but didn’t.
-D/a
I have some regrets. They say you regret those things you don’t do more than those you do but I would say it runs about even. You never know till after which. I’ll tell one that’s been on my mind a lot because he was sentenced to 2 life terms recently.
I was at a party some years back when this guy Glen pushes my besoted brother over a bicycle and in a tangle of metal he goes down hard. I’m about to get up to go help but I notice his buds are picking him up and Glen comes over to sit right next to me. He has his arms crossed and this smug smile on his face so I reach down and grab the metal folding chair by the front leg and pull straight up. He does a 180 still in the seat and smacks the top of his head without so much as getting his arms uncrossed.
Everybody laughs which enrages him more and he jumps up telling me how he is going to kick my ass. I tell him I consider us even because that was my brother he pushed over but we can take it as far as he wants. He calls me a brave little shit and I call it over so he can save some face. I forget about mostly except for the few times somebody reminds me with a laugh.
Then years later I read in the Eagle how him and his brother raped a 3 year old girl. I imagine the horror and pain and the emotional scars he left on her and I regret more than anything I did not break his neck.
Maybe I’ve told this before. As I say, it has been on my mind.
My first marriage.
So many relationship regrets. And I can look on the bright side and say that without making those mistakes, I wouldn’t be where I am, but honestly, I could’ve figured it out a lot sooner and saved myself a ton of tedious soul-draining crap.
I regret settling down so far away from my parents and sister. It takes a lot of money and the spending of precious vacation days to see them nowadays, so visits are too few and far between. There are no jobs in my wife’s career field where they live, though, and besides, her parents are here. Moving back to where my family is would just pull her away from hers.
I’ve got a list.
But ya know…I wouldn’t change anything, because the things I’ve done that I regret helped guide me to where I am now. If I changed anything, I wouldn’t be with SWMBO today and I can’t even begin to visualize life without her.
Not buying Microsoft stock back in the 70’s.
Refusing the offer of a partnership in a mobile phone store in the 80’s.
If I ever try to give you financial advice, shoot me.
Majoring in English instead of in Math, as I could have.
Well…
A few years back, when I turned 35, I applied to join the FBI. I actually applied the same day I became a US citizen - I’d always wanted to be an FBI Special Agent, ever since watching American TV and films when I was a kid. Put it this way - I took my citizenship oath, went home and applied online, before even calling my mother to tell her I was now an American.
Back then, they had very strict rules about prior drug use, which were that you couldn’t ever have used ‘hard’ drugs, that you couldn’t have used weed in the last 3 years and that you couldn’t have used weed more than 15 times total in your lifetime (this was never clear to me - is that 15 puffs on a joint or 15 full weekends, or 15 parties or what?) that last rule is now gone, although the 3-year rule is still used (http://www.fbijobs.gov/52.asp)…
Anyway, I was fine on never using hard drugs, and I was probably fine on the total usage, but I was iffy on the 3 years thing - it was about 2 1/2 years since I’d eaten a pot brownie at a party. So I lied on my SF-86 form and said it was >3 years.
Anyway, I passed the first interview (at my local office), the second interview (they flew me to L.A.), the fitness test (which the vast majority of candidates fail, BTW) and the background check. This had taken 18 months, and I was only about 5 months from being ineligible (you need to be in by age 37 - my local contact talked about having me technically join the FBI prior to going to the academy, just so I could get in by my 37th birthday). At this point I was in the last 3%-5% of candidates - it’s a very low acceptance rate.
All I have left is the medical exam (which I would certainly have passed) and the polygraph.
Ah yes… the polygraph.
I won’t go into details about what happens in a polygraph exam, except to say that there is often a certain amount of deception by the examiner (perhaps in addition to any by the candidate). Specifically (and I only found this out afterwards), after one battery of tests, the examiner leaves the room to “analyze the results” (i.e. have a smoke), and then returns saying something along the lines of “There were some inconsistencies in your responses. Do you have anything you want to tell me?”. they may well not have ‘found’ anything, but part of the test is to try to convince the candidate to admit to things, even if they haven’t shown up on the polygraph itself.
So I admitted to the initial lie on the SF-86. I tried to justify it by saying that it was now (as of the polygraph date) more than 4 years prior, and that if I had waited until I’d passed the 3 year mark before applying, I wouldn’t have gotten in before my 37th birthday.
Anyway, at the examiner’s urging, I wrote out an apologetic statement explaining all the above, and left the exam. He said it could make a difference.
They wrote back 3 weeks later saying my application was denied.
So I’m conflicted about my regret - should I regret my initial lie, or should I regret admitting to the lie when questioned. My more ethical friends would say the former, and I’d respond that if I wanted to join the FBI, I had to apply when I did, for age reasons. So yeah, I do regret that. And, of course, in hindsight, I regret the pot brownie which put me inside the 3 years usage guideline…
But I really, really regret the admission I made in the polygraph exam. Had I not admitted it, I might have passed, or at least got a retake. But by admitting it, I blew my chance.
I’m not claiming that I am blameless, obviously (regretting not lying to the Feds doesn’t really put me on the side of the angels!), but I honestly think I would have made a good agent. Certainly better than those agents who lied and sold secrets to foreign governments (all of whom passed their regular ongoing polygraph exams, BTW!).
So, there’s #2, right there. 5 years on, there’s not a month goes by that I don’t think about it and regret it and it still hurts. I screwed up and as a result, I ruined my chance to do the one thing I always wanted to do.
Not looking for sympathy, but having started this thread, I figured you’d want a good story 
See, the thing is, you can’t go back in time. You have no idea how things you regret doing, or not doing, would have changed the path you’re on now. Maybe things would have been worse: a lot worse. There’s no way of knowing.
I know this is all philosophical babble-gab crap, but it’s true.
I left girlfriends who really, really liked me because I just couldn’t see myself long-term with them. I also had my heart ripped from my chest in college by my girlfriend of 3 years.
I’m married with two pretty decent kids, but my marriage is not good. I have no idea if any of the above would have been any better; they may have been worse.
I could have found myself stuck in my old hometown at this point with very high unemployment and no prospects, instead of working at a decent federal job hundreds of miles from where I grew up.
You can’t sit back and regret the things that happened, or the choices you made. You could be dead somewhere by now if you followed an alternate path.
I might regret clicking on “Submit Reply.” Oh, what the hell.
Leaffan,
Oh I agree.
In my case, my regrets are far outweighed by my…er…non-regrets (there’s a word for non-regrets, but I can’t think of it right now). But the non-regrets are much less interesting
frankly, I was hoping this thread would be a bunch of interesting stories about the crazy shit we all did when younger - foolish, callow youth and all that. even my two regret stories aren’t that bad. I’ve had bad breakups and failed relationships, but they’re less things I regret and more just bad shit that happened to me. To me, a regret has to imply some (very possibly stupid) action on my part. Like getting arrested for public nudity, but that’s not really very interesting…
I would say that my biggest regret is spending the first 14 years of my life hating myself and pretty much every other human being I came into contact with. Yeah, that’d be about it.
But then again, if I hadn’t spent the first part of my life like that, would I enjoy my current place as much as I do now?
Idk, but I think I’ll stick with the cards I’ve been given. Go fish.
I suppose it would be too melodramatic to say the entire existence of my life.
That I didn’t start writing seriously until I was almost 30.
That I never asked a certain girl to the senior prom. She had a crush on me and I liked her, but nothing more than a friend. Nevertheless, I was going to ask her, when another friend told the long and involved story about why he’d never go. I got cold feet. I doubt anything would have come of it, but later she messed up pretty badly for awhile and I felt that if I had asked her and we had some sort of relationship, she’d be better off (though eventually she recovered).
I was in Baltimore just after Raphael Palmiero was discovered to have taken steroids. A Baltimore sports store was selling Palmiero jerseys for $20, a fraction of their original cost. I wish I had bought one. It would have had a place of honor next to my New York Islanders "Fish Sticks" logo cap.
