Regrets

Mackenzie asked me the other day if I had any regrets.

There are so many things that I could regret.

I could regret not trying harder in school. I could have made the dean's list for all eight semesters, and not just the last three. But I don't think it would have changed my life as it is now.

I could regret some of those relationships I had during those hazy years of college. But, I had fun, and, again, no lasting repercussions.

I could regret the under-age drinking, and later recreational pot-smoking now that I have a teen myself and will be telling him that these things are the very things I want him to avoid, but, again, I turned out ok.

I could regret getting married at twenty, pregnant six-months later, and finding myself a single mom eighteen months after that. But then I wouldn't have Dillon.

I could regret marrying into the Navy and spending the next twenty years away from my family. But I can't imagine my life without Tater and subsequently, Mackenzie. I wouldn't have seen the things we've seen, been the places we've been, or met the friends we now call family.

I could regret the times that I was a less-than stellar parent. But I know I've done my best and my kids are awesome. Simply awesome.

What I do regret is one incident that happened in college. I was sitting outside on a stone bench, surrounded by other stone benches occupied by other students. Directly across from me, on the outer edge of this sitting area was an oak tree with a garbage can next to it. An Indian Summer had come to Indiana, and I was enjoying the last of summer while studying and waiting for my next class. I remember looking up from my books just in time to see a blind student tap, tap his way past a stone bench and slam right into the trashcan under the tree. My instincts made me start to get up and help, until I looked around and saw that no one, not even the kids closest to the blind student were offering help. My self-consciousness kicked in, and I realized that if I got up to help him, everyone would be looking at me (and what if my help angered him and he rejected it?). So I sat there. With everyone else, silently watching a young blind man tap-taping his way out of the maze of concrete benches he had haplessly wandered into.

That was twenty years ago. The blind boy and the other students are strangers today as they were back then and probably not one of them, including the blind boy, even remembers those few moments we shared in history. But I have played that scene over in my head, hundreds, maybe thousands, of times since. Sometimes I sit there and do nothing again. Sometimes I get up to help and draw the wrath of a proud young man. Sometimes he is very grateful for my help and gets on his way without bruising his knees on trashcans and benches. I know if I had the chance to do over, I'd make the right choice. I would get up to help him. Even if people stared at me. Even if I angered him.

And that was what I told Mackenzie, in the hope that if she ever finds herself in a similar situation someday, she will remember that this trivial incident, probably best forgotten, was my biggest regret.