Could I Get A Do-Over?

EVERY MORNING WHEN I VENTURE OUT into the wilds of St. Arbucks I make a point of switching on my phone. I log into the St. Arbucks server just in case I need to go online. There might be a call to settle a dispute among the Usual Suspects – “The correct answer is ‘Have Gun, Will Travel’.”

When I first log on I get a screen showing the latest headlines, courtesy of some intern in Seattle.

Today (7/18) the lead story was, “New York Today – A Convention Begins.” This was about the start of the Republican National Convention – that isn’t being held in New York, but in Cleveland.

Oh, well, what should I expect from an intern in Seattle who is probably paid in coffee beans?

I didn’t bother to read the rest of the story. If they couldn’t get the headline right I didn’t hold out much hope for the rest of it.

I’m confident, however, that the unduly caffeinated intern in Seattle might find a journalistic future working in Terre Haute (That’s French for, Welcome to Idaho.”) at the Tribune-Star newspaper/birdcage liner.

I know, I know – who am I to criticize others? Don’t I make more than my share of mistakes?

Yup. I sure do.

If I could undo just a tiny fraction of my mistakes in life I think I could still be 25 years old.

Unfortunately, I think that a goodly portion of my curmudgeonly griping comes about because my feet hurt. I’m not by nature a crabby individual – but when I’m not feeling well – “Stop, Drop, and Roll,” is not a bad piece of advice.

I cringe when I’m watching an old movie and one character asks another, “If you had your life to do over, would you change anything?” and the other character replies with, “Not a thing, Darling.”

If there is one person who would not change a million things in their past, I believe that they are either stupid or …or… No, stupid pretty much covers it.

We’ve all made decisions that we’d like a second crack at. Most were small and not life altering – like eating at a place called Taco Casita – the worst Mexican restaurant on Earth, or joining the Columbia Record Club shortly before they went belly-up.

Along the way I made some career choices that I wish I could get a Mulligan on. Remind me to never again listen to a voice coach who had two kids in college and needed every paying student he could get.

The life-altering decisions that I’d like a second shot at usually involved personal relationships (read “attractive, but emotionally unstable women”). The changes I would want would be simple: say “No” and run the other way.

I do wish that I had met my wife years earlier. Of course, she was still married at that point, so things could have been extremely awkward with me around.

I guess that the life we are living now is the product of all those things in our past – the good choices and the awful ones. Without all of those decisions, and the impact they had on our futures, we would not be the persons we are today. (That is a very complex sentence.)  

The me I am now may be a mess, but I’m a self-made mess.

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