Regrets, I've had a few, but then again....

Watching the most hyped films, such as James Bond, Schwartzenager (sp?)

skiing

fighting in Iraq, Vietnam, etc.

driving a Hummer, Navigator, etc

No regrets about foregoing :

The Big Wedding

A baby

Owning a Louis Vuitton anything

Watching The Sopranos

Moving to Florida

Buying the little condo in Tribeca.

Having sex with with that really hot looking guy with the red mohawk that I meet in a punk club in 1981 . I'm sure he is now either dead from a STD, in jail for drug possession or an accountant on Long Island.

(Scuba diving is fun Chai}.

Skydiving (I decided the fellow who wanted me to do that was not a good lifetime match for me)

being a concert pianist - talk about performance fear

following the ups and downs of the stockmarket for a lifetime

besides hearing about them ad infinitum at my onetime office's lunch get togethers, actually watching Andre the Giant and Hulk Hogan. In today's terms, fill in your own appropriate tv program

taken a world cruise (I'd have to jump overboard)

worked on the 64th floor of a skyscraper

solo piloted a small boat across the Atlantic





Well, that's a start......

Holding, petting, touching....pretty much anything besides killing or trying to kill a snake.

Trying new food. I know exactly what I want/like, never in my life have I thought...I need/want something new to eat....never.

getting a perm

Caribou and 2Packs made me laugh, 2P about the food.

never watched a reality show
never had sex with a woman
never skydived or been on snow skis
never ran in a marathon

ugh...jumping in for a mo' with a regret I do have....eoe reminded me with that marathon mention.


I....HATE....RUNNING

It's fine and good for you if you enjoy it, but I'm just not built for it.

I tried for a solid, oh....9 months to a year to get into running in my mid 20's, was in good shape cardiovascular-wise anyway, trim, good muscle tone...but I loathed every step I took.

Why did I ever do that?
Because so many said how wonderful it was, challenging of running whatever k's etc. etc. etc.

screw that, for me it was painful, boring, time consuming and yucky.


xxxxx....

ok, no regrets about NOT

Going down into a small cave in the ground, entrance about 2 1/2 feet wide.

Another person with no regrets about NOT skydiving.

Never taken a Hawaiian vacation

I have no regrets about...

Not having the ten children I once dreamed of having

Never hang gliding

Not believing my friends that said drugs are great

Breaking up with Todd. I could have done it better, but no regrets that I did. (Gawd, why did he have to cry? That sucked)

Run a marathon

Guuuurlll, we don't even want to go there!
Care to compare lists?

Don't worry about Todd. He ran off with Lisa Loopner.

Accepting the First Mr. Noddy's dictum that while we were divorced, we would be Good Friends with Benefits for Him.

I have no regrets about:

Never doing any type of illegal drugs

Not telling my soon to be former boss that the girl he hired is not right for this company and untrusty worthy after what he put me through!

Not having a child yet

Telling my husband's ex completely off after trying to sabotage my marriage.

These seem to be the main things that I am definetely not regretting....feeling good about that right about now.

I don't regret leaving my family and friends in Chicago so many years ago and chasing the Olympics to Atlanta.

Never reading the newspaper or watching national/international news.

Cutting off emotional ties from my mother forever.

Choosing to live in a overcrowded, chaotic city (and country) when I could have relocated to become one more Indian immigrant in another, saner country.

Hardly watching any TV.

Not having a child, yet.

Not having much money till I started working.

Slightly tangential.. but it amuses me to post it here - a column in the SF Chronicle by Jon Carroll about, well, things done and things not done:



JON CARROLL

Friday, February 1, 2008


My colleague John Flinn recently wrote a column reflecting on the number of "Before You Die" books that have lately populated the bookstores. The trend was apparently started by Patricia Schultz, who wrote "1,000 Places to See Before You Die" in 2003. Since then, it's become a familiar format for any writer who wants to pitch an idea, because any concept is more marketable when it comes in list form.

See, for instance, "1,000 Things to Do in New York Before You Become a Phony," by J.D. Salinger. Or "1,000 Things to Do While You're Waiting for the White Whale," by ... I see you're way ahead of me.

Adding to the mania is a movie called "The Bucket List," where Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman do a lot of things they wished they had done before but hadn't. Apparently, one of these things is skydiving, which does not make my top 1,000. I've never seen the appeal of experiencing death right up until technology says, oops, second chance after all. I know, I know, it's liberating and exhilarating. So is escaping from North Korea, but I don't want to do that either.

Flinn attributes this sudden cultural surge to the aging of the Boomer generation, now experiencing regret in a major way. A list is a way of codifying that regret and perhaps providing the motivation to cross a few things off the list.

Of course, time has a way of crossing items off your list without your input. I now recognize that I will never get back in shape enough to participate in the Olympic trials for the 400 meters. I now recognize that my chances of winning a MacArthur genius grant have been reduced to zero. I now recognize that I will never have the chance to woo Susan Sarandon. (One would never do anything foolish, but one would love the opportunity to decline to do something foolish. "Perhaps it would be best for both of us, Susan, if we just shook hands here in the lobby." That would be a sentence one would like to utter.)

But there's another flaw in the top 1,000 list idea. A lot of the coolest things I've done would never have made any list. I've seen the pyramids of Egypt, and they looked just like the pyramids of Egypt. Wonders that specific come with the awe removed by familiarity. Even being inside the Great Pyramid was not notably impressive - it was a claustrophobic tunnel leading down to a claustrophobic room, both of them filled with tourists.
(That's another problem with lists - other people. They have their own lists; they want to see the pyramids too. But on my day, they should be forbidden to enter the grounds. Only friendly guides and me, please.)
The temples at Karnak were more awe-inspiring. Even better was a bicycle trip we took across the river from Luxor, home of the Karnak complex. We started out on the ferry - that was already a thing - and pedaled up to the Tombs of the Nobles, part of the huge necropolis generally known as Valley of the Kings. We reached a tomb, mostly because small boys pointed the way, and a wizened caretaker took us through. Astonishing murals on the walls; nobody else around. It never would have made the list because I'd never heard of it.

And the very best part of the whole trip to Egypt was shopping for fabric one day with my younger daughter. At every shop, we were invited in, asked if we wanted some tea and offered comfortable seats, and we watched as a bewildering variety of rugs was presented to us, one on top of another like pancakes. We kept saying, "No rugs, no rugs," and they kept bringing rugs. Shana finally bought some fabric, maybe 3 feet by 1 foot, which she used to decorate sterile hotel rooms all over the world. We were giggling the whole time.
Not on a list; wouldn't trade the memory for anything.

I'd never seen fireflies until a summer in Chicago. Fireflies are routine for some people, but for a California boy - heaven. And yet so few insect encounters make the list. We once did a day hike through 10-foot-tall ginger plants at the top of Waimea Canyon on Kauai; I remember saying, "If I had to die tomorrow, I'd die happy." Probably that was an exaggeration; still, I remember it with immense fondness. It was not part of a package tour and did not involve risk; it was just serene and gorgeous, and the weather held. How could it be on a list? Who knew?
By contrast, I've been up to 16,000 feet in the Himalayas, across the glacier from Everest base camp. Thin air, cold nights, constant headaches. Hey, it's off my list, though.

I once rode little cable cars halfway to the stars. Had they gone all
the way, that would have been a different deal.

I don't regret failing to trade my '57 Chevy for an Edsel.