I’ve been lucky in the majority of my life to not have many regrets. I haven’t lived a perfect life by any means, nor even a particularly pious one either. I’ve muddled along doing the best I could and trying as much as possible to not cause undue hurt or complications to anyone. I’ve failed quite miserably at that task and have hurt some I meant no harm to and complicated what should have been a simple situation. I do have a few things I wish I’d done differently. Now I do have some missed opportunities in my life that others would call a regret, but I just look at it as having taken a different, sometimes worse, road. So here’s a few of the things in my life I wish I’d have done differently or had a chance at.

One regret I have is a silly one to most people I’m sure. I regret having never played in a real, continuing, and expertly run Dungeons and Dragons campaign. I have been fascinated with the role playing game since I watched a group of guys a year older than me in middle school play some rounds when I was in sixth grade. I bought the beginner set and read everything I could get my hands on about the game. I was only lacking one thing – a group to play with. I had easily the broadest imagination of all my friends and I thought the fantasy world would be a great escape and world to explore. Well, they didn’t. I got two friends to play a few rounds of a campaign I made up, but it went nowhere and they pretty much hated every moment. Most of my friends were the outdoor type and D and D doesn’t really lend itself to that kind of mindset.

A second regret I have is a little more serious. I wish I’d been in the armed services. When I was eighteen and working at Advance Auto Parts, I had a coworker who was a medically discharged Marine. I ate up his stories. I’ve also got a history of service in my family. Daddy served in Vietnam. Papa Wham served in World War II, and my great-grandfather – Papa Wham’s dad – served at the tail end of World War I. So I had an itch to join up and be apart of their brotherhood. I let Moose, my Marine coworker, drive me to the recruiting office where two of his former unit partners were the recruiters. I took the ASVAB and scored the highest score ever in that office. They were really excited and told me I could do anything in the Corps I wanted to based on my score. Then, I went to processing. That was where you get inspected and judged fit or unfit for the service. Here’s where I had a problem. I’d had a car wreck in my sophomore year and a wooden spike went through my left leg. The wound was pretty gnarly but it healed up, mostly. I still had a ragged scar in that part of my leg. Problem was, I couldn’t stand that scar to be touched. It pained me a lot. Well, the last station in the inspection I went to, one away from taking the oath and starting on the way to Parris Island, the doctor in charge looked at that scar and shoved three fingers right into it. I almost vomited and I went to my knees. That failed me because, as the doctor said, the first thing an enemy who captured me and wanted me to talk would do would be to attack that scar, and there was no place in the Corps for men with built-in torture points. I went home in shame. The recruiters would barely look at me when I picked up my diploma I’d sent in. So, I ended up going to college. I guess it worked out right though, because if I hadn’t gone to college and followed that path, I wouldn’t have met some of the most important people in my life, not least of whom would be Budge.

College produced another regret I carried along. I wish I’d tried harder to carry on in Calculus and maybe have become an engineer and made some real money in my life and provided a better future for my family. Instead, I got scared the very first day of class and dropped out of the program altogether. What made it so hard was any science based degree I looked at required at least one, if not more, semesters of Calculus, and I had it in my head I couldn’t do it. No confidence, even though I’d done pretty well in Calculus in high school. I just didn’t think I could make it without Mr. Brady teaching me and some of my friends tutoring me. That’s how I ended up in education and became an English teacher. The money hopes went out the window, and in the end, my teaching career turned out to implode (I talk about that elsewhere if you can find it) so in the very end, I sit here on Social Security Disability and wonder what’s going to happen in the future. Again, though, if I hadn’t become an English teacher, I never would have ended up at Woodmont High School and I never would have met Budge and we wouldn’t be nearing thirty years married together, so I guess that’s what was supposed to happen.

Another regret, more of one of those “missed opportunities” I talked about, came up not long after Budge and I married. I am an ordained minister. Not many people know that. I’ve preached fill in services and the odd revival here and there. One person who always gave me plenty of chances to preach was my Great-uncle Claude Hurley. He pastored a church in Florence, SC for fifty years. In my middle twenties, I went down and preached revivals for him. He liked my style and the way I interacted with people, and his congregation loved Budge and me. So he called me one day and told me he wanted to talk to me. I met him at Aunt Pearl’s and he told me he was stepping down from pastoring his church. He wanted me to take over for him. I’d have inherited a fully paid for church building, a thriving congregation, and a good salary. It was every minister’s dream come true. I turned it down. Again, I was scared of leaving what I knew. I was in my third year of teaching and Budge had just started a job she later came to hate, but we didn’t know that at the time. Uncle Claude was disappointed, but he understood. He found another minister to take his place, and I kept on keeping on. I don’t know what would have happened if I’d taken his church and tried to be a good minister. I might have done a fantastic job. Budge might have excelled as a pastor’s wife. It could have been amazing, but I’ll never know. All because I was scared. I still look back sometimes and wonder “what if” about that.

As you can tell, fear is a big reason for most of my regrets – the ones I mention here and others through my life. Fear is hard to overcome. Inertia is a powerful force in a person’s life like mine. I’ve never been a risktaker or a maverick of any kind. I’ve always stuck to the know paths, the “safe” paths. It hasn’t helped me much, to be honest. I’ve missed out on a great many things that could have been excellent things for me to do. But, I was scared.

Writing this blog doesn’t scare me though. Even if I doubt more that a handful of people ever read it. It’s one of the few things of any legacy I have. That’s why when I feel like not making any more posts, I push on through. Maybe it’ll mean something to someone, somewhere, someday.

Love ya’ll, and keep your feet clean!