What if?

What if?

I was recently asked if now that I'm in my second half of life, do I have any regrets about choices I had made that, given the chance, I would like to rewrite?  What a great question!  I've been pondering this over the past year or so, half hoping someone, someone whom I valued, would ask me this very question!  What one choice would I rewrite, given the chance? I'm going to list ten changes that I'd like to make, and then pick one at the end. So here goes nothing!

1.  I should have chosen to sleep with "nice" D!  Man what a miss!

2.  I should have not chosen to sleep with "evil" D! (Different girl!)  That was stupid!

3.  I should have chosen to work with P.G. and his construction company, when offered a job.

4.  I should have chosen to follow the recommendation of my 5th grade Iowa Test, and Career Placement Aptitude Test, and gone in to the Forestry Service, since I was well suited for "work out of doors with minimal customer contact". (No shit! At the ripe old age of 11?)

5.  I would have liked to have chosen to finish my first college attempt, in digital computing, in 1981! 

(That was a BIG BIG miss!)

6.  I'd would like to not have hit a cop with a baseball bat. It was 3am, dark, they burst into my downtown Providence apartment, I was scared, I started swinging... I hit something... and I paid for it dearly!  

7.  I should have quit worrying about religious guilt, and done stuff for the "right" reason earlier in my life, instead of wondering if I earned enough "good" points to buy off my earlier "bad" points.

8.  I should have never started riding motorcycles.  Dumb! Dumb! Dumb!

9.  I should have learned to weld. I'll never get the chance to weld now due to my brain implant. Really, no fooling! (Deep Brain Stimulator for Parkinson's Disease Feb 2010)

10.  I should have chosen to apply myself to learning how to play the digeridoo, speak French, sell used cars, juggle 5 balls, walk a tight rope, grow a pony tail, parachute, sail around the world, fly fish, grow pot, and a myriad of random thoughts that are racing through my mind right now.

And now the moment of truth.... Drum roll please!

As I am extremely happy with how my journey seems to be ending up, Parkinson's included, I'd have to weasel my choice of rewrites down to one that in no way could alter my present situation.  Of the ten, six would alter any chance of me meeting Susan.  Two I can still do presently, and thusly don't need to alter my past. The remaining two are easy to chose between. Should I have slept with the "nice" D. or should I not have slept with the "evil" D.?  Clearly, my one life's rewrite is that I would have liked to have slept with the "nice" D. when I had the opportunity to.

Roger OUT!