Regret

Regrets, I’ve had a few but then again too few to mention, “My Way,” Frank Sinatra

No matter how happy you may be with your life, I’ll bet each of you harbors some regrets. Hurtful words you wish you’d never uttered, bad decisions, missed opportunities, time wasted on projects that didn’t pan out. We all make mistakes, but most are forgotten.

A regret is a mistake you can’t forget.

As the song goes, I’m lucky to have fairly few regrets. And they’re really not such big deals in the grand scheme of things. One is that I studied classical piano instead of guitar in my 20s. Woulda been a rock star. Another is the blown backstroke flip turn in the 200 yard IM that kept me out of the finals of the NY State NCAA Championships. There were a few other mistakes along the way, well, plenty of them, but the “biggest” regret is also one that is really, at least on the surface, not big enough to mention. Still…

It’s an experience from my high school days that I handled so stupidly, it’s actually funny to reflect on now. Regular readers know my social development was behind the curve as a teen. By the age of 16 I had attended parties and dances, but had not dated anyone, not that I lacked the desire. I was still plagued by doubts about my desirability to girls. My self image did not keep pace with my physical development as my formerly pudgy body metamorphosed, thanks to swimming, into a smaller version of Michael Phelps’s. Even though I disliked the face I saw in the mirror, apparently others saw me as not bad looking. In my junior year, I was the captain the swim team and was in advanced placement classes with the brightest students. Good qualifications for popularity, but somehow I didn’t realize that either.

The “big” regret was a failure to connect the dots with Judy. Judy was, as they say, the whole package. Captain of the cheerleaders and gorgeous. She was a leader in student government and several clubs, a stellar student with a sweet disposition, oh, and did I mention gorgeous? She was the type of girl who could have had her pick of guys. Like other guys in our class, no doubt, I admired her from afar, or more in keeping with the hormonal state of a teen, lusted after her. That she might be interested in me never occurred to me.

In those days girls were not supposed to just ask guys out. They had to be indirect.

One day during lunch Judy approached me and asked for help with a math assignment. No problem, I sat with her for a short while, offered what help I could and that was the end of that. Or so I assumed. But soon after that she called me, ostensibly seeking more tutoring, that I again provided. Then the phone calls started coming more often and segued into enjoyable chats. The fact was Judy was doing fine with math and, erroneously, I attributed it to my help—help that, in fact she never needed. Then, during a phone call she played the piano for me. The song? Gershwin’s “The Man I Love.” Like the poor slob who gets a smile from a lady and looks over his shoulder for whomever it was directed at, I completely missed the message. Fact is, although I would have killed for a girlfriend of such quality, my fears and self doubt overcame my usually levelheaded intellect. Idiot that I was, I declined her invitation to study for the math final at her house, a meeting that I suspect would have involved a little math and a lot of other things.

It came to a head in math class when she passed me a note reading, “I’m totally lost. Desperate for your help!!” What was my moronic reply? “If you listen instead of writing notes, maybe you’ll understand it.” After class, Judy collared me in the hall and, in a rage, told me she never wanted to talk to me again. I was too mortified to even ask why or to beg for a second chance. With the exception of our first high school reunion when she told me she was seriously involved with someone, we never saw each other or spoke again. By then I’d figured it out, but a day late and a dollar short as they say.

Probably in part thanks to the lesson I received from Judy, I went on to operate with increasing confidence socially and, as readers know, with no regrets about the ultimate choice I made for a spouse. Still, to have experienced a relationship with a person of Judy’s caliber at that time in my life would have been as ego enhancing and instructive as it would have been enjoyable. One can’t help but wonder, “what if…”

It’s comforting, though, to realize that if this is my biggest regret, I should consider myself one lucky guy.