I’ve always sort of envied the great singer Frank Sinatra. He had regrets, but just a few, too few, in fact, to mention. I think he was lucky that way.
As for me, while I am not flooded with regrets, I think I might outdo Old Blue Eyes in that department. I won’t go through the whole list with you, though I am sure you wish I would mention them all, unlike Frank, but I will touch on a few of the things I’ve done that I wish I hadn’t.
When I was about ten years old, I ate horse radish. I really wish I hadn’t done that and regret it to this day. But we had a rule around our kitchen table. A boy could not reject a food without trying it. I regret that rule and I have never forgiven the horses who made the radish. Or maybe it was made from horses, as I thought. I don’t know.
I regret jumping into a pond and coming out of there with blood suckers attached to my legs. Those creatures were literally bloodthirsty. I regret accepting a hitchhiker’s ride with a speed demon who buried the needle on his speedometer at 120 miles an hour before he agreed to let me out. I also regret that the hair started falling out of my head that day.
In my first year of university, I regret dating two sisters at the same time. The words of the Lovin’ Spoonful song, “Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind?”, still ring in my brain today. The sisters, upon finding out they were dating the same guy, made up my mind for me. I further regret that the three of us were in most of the same classes that year so I was able to relive the error of my ways almost every day.
But that was a long time ago, and I have piled up new regrets. One of them involves a tee-shirt I bought a few years ago. It’s a very nice shirt but it had an oversized tag inside the collar that scraped against my neck.
So, I ripped it off.
I really regret doing that because when I put on the shirt, which I do almost every day, I don’t know which is the front and which is the back. And I regret that there is such a thing as the law of averages because 90 per cent of the time, I pull the darned thing on backwards.
But, like Bugs Bunny said when he defied the law of gravity in one episode, “I never studied law.” And I regret having never studied it too.
Still, not as much as I regret eating horse radish.
©2021 Jim Hagarty
