He has regrets. Why would you think he hadn’t any? Everyone has regrets, it’s like saying everyone has an itch. It’s just that you don’t necessarily see everyone scratch. You know, dig into their own skin until it is red and inflamed. It’s just that some people never tell you they regret, like they itch but you never see them scratch.
Even the Devil? Does he have regrets?
Indeed. Satan thrives on regrets. His list of regrets is like an electron. It keeps growing by getting thinner as it expands.
OK. Skip the Devil. What does God regret? Does he regret making the earth round, putting zinc in the ground, giving puppies beguiling eyes, parting the Red Sea?
Well, there is Saul who never lived up to his ability to successfully lead the Israelites. Saul didn’t meet God’s expectations. God wasn’t good at selecting kings. Look at David, he had to be chastised.
What’s your point? I rarely understand, get your message.
Oh. There isn’t any. I’m just trying to follow instructions. I’m usually pretty good at that.
I agree that the Satan thrives on regrets, but only the regrets of others, meaning all of mankind. They feed him and sustain him. But I think as the Devil, he never questions anything he's done. He just makes sure that's not the case with any of us.
Nice piece, thought provoking. Especially imagining God's regrets
If only she hadn’t left her cell phone on the table in the coffee room. If only Frank hadn’t picked it up. If only she hadn’t chosen the passcode “010203” which she realizes with a thud, was little better than no passcode at all. If only she hadn’t bragged. That was her downfall, bragging, and to Ralph, for Pete’s sake, poor Ralph who was amazed at how easy it had been to siphon money out of the company bank account. It was cool, impressing Ralph, but then Ralph was easily amused. If only she hadn’t bragged on a TEXT. God, how stupid was that? She hadn’t wanted to do it. It was Francine’s fault, of course. If only she hadn’t met Francine, her devious little mind, her flirty smile. Her designer clothes. And those BOOTS. That was what did it. If only she hadn’t been jealous of Francine. If only Francine hadn’t given her the idea.
What’s regretted? Not going to Vietnam? My part in abortions?
Twenty years to finish college?
And just what will you do with a degree in anthropology, she asked.
Duh. Dig the earth in grids. Look for bones and the stone tools they used to kill mammoths.
One regret is never drilling the Greenland ice a mile deep to check the pollen there.
Regrets, not more time outside in starlight. Unhonest communication by virtue of omissions.
Calculated retreats from one place or another of responsibilities. Shirking?
There must have been some but I don’t remember much.
Regrets not being a sentry for picketed horses during the Civil War battle of Antietam.
Of finding a cure for pneumonia before he died of it.
Conversely not regretting quitting smoking, or walking all those miles, beforehand, for a Camel.
So it goes. Frankly I regret it took so long to learn what great sex is. But don’t regret sex.
Really it’s what it is in its own time so in fact no regrets in that department.
Which makes me wonder what I do really regret. I can’t think of anything, because when someone asks would you go back and do it all over again the answer is No.
Not even the Greenland pollen or undiscovered mammoth bones. Huh.
And I didn’t really want to be a sentry in the Civil War after all.
Wouldn’t change a thing. Right, do stupid things all over again.
It's starting to sound like regrets and no regrets are the same thing.
But then I think of all the good things I could have done as a billionaire.
Instead people say they’re envious of my lifestyle based on having no money.
No regrets there either, only minor sellouts along the way, also unremembered.
Which is what happens at some point, everything unremembered.
A convenience actually, when you get closer and closer to, you know,
I have a very good friend, an anthropologist from the University of Chicago, who after graduation never worked a day in her life... oops,, she was a cashier at In-N-Out Burger for about six months.
First of five preference. 'Geography & Anthropology'; just six places; at Durham.
Got off the Inter-City - was it even brand labelled, back in the day? - at Central Station, having just crossed The Tyne for the first time. Walked at pace up the curve of Georgian Grey Street; took in the neo-classical portico of The Theatre Royal; made it, just, into the Daysh Building, in time, for interview.
Strolling back down towards Tyne, to await the tea time, take me back to Middle England train, realised I'd fallen in love with Newcastle, 'Fog on the Tyne' n'all, was going to be 'Mine all mine'... and it was for six years, though the Anthropology was dropped, informally it stuck, still does to this day... nothing like digging up an Etruscan Urn and penning an Ode to about it.
Not that Anthrpological was the line of work I went into. Geography got me into work and the rest is History. Not least how I came to be employed and to spend most of my career as a Marketing, Management & Business Educator.
No regrets worth mentioning but worth saying that 'Egrets? I've had a few' amongst the most enjoyed drawn artworks to have hung well on and long graced one part of one of our walls.
Gillian Tett* is an exemplar of how study of the doubly arcane combo Archaeology & Anthropologist can lead a body to make one or more contemporary marks that will tend to will leave a longer term note in the annals of local, UK, History!
Conversely not regretting quitting smoking, or walking all those miles, beforehand, for a Camel.So it goes. Frankly I regret it took so long to learn what great sex is. But don’t regret sex.
What does great sex have to do with camels? I want to read THAT one.
In Neil Gaiman's (don't hit me anyone, I'm just the messenger here) Sandman, the reaper is a woman. Chatting away with her brother as she makes her rounds.
The younger four of us were all born one after another, so were all going to be in college at the same time. For my middle class-parents, this meant that we were all going to a state school – anything else would be unfair to the other siblings. But here’s the thing: I wasn’t like my siblings. I was ranked number 4 in my class of 750. A national Merit Scholar. SAT scores way up there. Rave references from teachers. Three aced AP courses. Four years of Drama Society productions, including writing a children’s play and touring the surrounding elementary schools. I would have gotten in.
What my parents seemed to willfully ignore was that Yale was a very wealthy institution. I would have gotten a lot of financial aid, a lot more than I got at Stony Brook, or later at NYU, (where I eventually transferred anyway.)
Why does it stick in my craw, all these years later? Because what I only realized later on, in my 20s, was that the professional trajectory of my friends who went to Ivy League schools went far more dramatically upward than my own. It had far less to do with the prestige of the school name on your resume than it did with the quality of the roommates you made, the friends you bonded with. Stony Brook was full of students who grew up in towns like Levittown and Hicksville. They didn’t take you home to their family estates for Easter break, or on a three-day ski trip to Vermont. If you needed funding for your student film, you were a helluva lot more likely to find it through the Dad of your lead actress, who’d unblinkingly write a check. College was about making lifelong friends, no matter where you go. I would have loved my well-heeled friends just as much as the friends I did make.
Oh, the fantasy alternative futures I created from the “what-if-I-had-gone-to-Yale” fantasy, one leading to life as a tenured professor in French Literature at some leafy liberal arts college, the other to the Yale School of Drama, and life as a playwright and director. But I’m lucid enough to realize in that alternative future, I’m responding to this same post right now, wondering why I didn’t go to NYU Film School and pursue a screenwriting career. Go figure.
I am an alumnus of an elite New England prep school that sent many graduates to Ivy League schools ( but not me ). No question the old boy networks still work, though probably less than a couple of generations ago. The writer Edward Hoagland once noted how many of these "elites" ended up "company men." While I wouldn't deny the advantages of privilege, one can I think live a creative and meaningful life without it. You might find that world to your liking, but you also might find it a place of conformity, convention, and compromise.
Oh, Yale also produced Paul Rudnick and Tony Kushner, and I think I would have run with the Yale School of Drama crowd and written some super cool plays. Or with the Romance Languages crowd. Chockful of super- smart gays in both places. I certainly had no problem living a "creative and meaningful life" without Yale! It's not as much a regret as a much as a "If-I-had=it-to-do-all-over-again." In fact I spent a year and one half in France between high school and college, learning it quite fluently, and only spent a year at Stony Brook before transferring to NYU and going to film school. And made this, which is impossible to regret having made. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7x27vmzFrg
I know because Paul Rudnik wrote "Farrell Covington and the Limits of Style" and the way he described the experience of Yale during those very years let me know it would have been very much my experience. And then I could have gone to France for my Junior Year Abroad when I would have been far more mature than when I was 17. And my disastrous lover was 28, not my own age like David in the film.
I could have been a bone digger, you know. Do you remember that? Or pottery or arrowheads. I could have gone that summer to Colorado and spent weeks on my hands and knees with a toothbrush and a trowel separating dirt from artifact, recording each shard in a notebook. I could have dug up remnants that archaeologists would still be piecing together, telling the story of a lost world. Or I might even have found the missing link that answered every question.
Instead I stayed home. Love tethered me. First love. Love for someone who, I thought, knew more than I did about everything, felt more about life than I ever knew possible, someone who had eyes so deeply brown, a smile so easy and welcoming, that I absorbed myself into that presence. You.
You talked to me all that summer of books and ideas and plans. So I read Hesse and Nietzsche. I saw myself in those plans (did you know that?), imagining with you as we turned every corner, explored every detour. I dismissed thoughts of ancient Colorado. We were together.
But the summer ended. My impetuous and heartfelt — and doomed — gesture slammed the door on us.
I always wondered, did you go on to live out your plans? Was I in your mind when you told them to me? Did you even know that I would have walked inside them with you?
I spent a good part of my life regretting what I missed in Colorado and the heartbreak I found at home.
It’s strange, I began to think, to regret both the action not taken and the action taken instead.
So I came to regret that regretting. I realized I could never know if I would have found the key to a civilization or the answers to a teenager’s heartbreak. So what, I thought. Haven't you wasted enough time, I asked myself. Nothing to be done. And then we met again, funeral of a friend.
You told me you don’t read those books anymore; didn’t remember reading them, for that matter. You got through life. And your eyes are shallow, and your smile hesitates.
And I'm done, now, with regret. I'm putting here on the page the hypothetical Colorado and the real immersion in you, and the real loss of you, artifacts of a life I'm still living.
I was offered a summer position in an archeological dig in Maine with one of my professors. No pay ! I was 40, had a child, and couldn't afford to work without pay. I didn't really regret it as the bones and stones part of anthropology didn't interest me as much as the cultural stuff like economics and social systems and how people made or didn't make decisions affecting their existence. The Norse settlement of Greenland is the most fascinating stories ever. I've read that over in over and it never fails to remind me how irrational humans are. An analogy today would be how we manage to ignore climate change.
There are analogies throughout history for almost anything humans can do. Probably not 'almost' but everything human. People might study history in the hopes of not repeating it, but that fails time and again, human nature being what it is. The one thing studying history does is remind me we living today didn't invent our current situations.
I like the ones that feel utterly autobiographical and that I can certainly identify with. And how Tod Cheney and you both happened to make archeological references.
I still remember being introduced to the awkward man with big, permanently startled eyes, a mouth shut tight, an unshaven chin; all below a careworn bunnet, drawn down to just above the startled eyes. Soiled dungarees tucked inside muddy wellingtons completed the sad look. But Sandy was vigorous, the most energetic of a small 'summer job' team sent to clear roadside ditches. The small team was made up of assorted duckers and divers, Sandy the nominated supervisor. While we ducked and dived, Sandy toiled. Wilson was King Rogue, any energy he expended, was in belittling the 'easy to belittle' supervisor. I knew Wilson for a bully and a loud mouth, still best to keep on his good side, ignore the sneering. And to join in the impromptu Friday party. Wilson sneaked away, returned with a case of beers, 'We deserve a reward after a hard week.' We drank and laughed while Sandy cleared ditches. The beer drained, Wilson looked around to keep the party spirit alive. We ventured towards Sandy. Later I would claim it was the booze, an explanation for why I grabbed his bunnet.
Wilson howled, 'Look guys, the old fool's bald as a badger.' They all laughed. I laughed too and tossed the bunnet high in the air. Sandy flapped about trying to recover the cap, trying to recover his dignity. They took turns taunting him with further skyward tosses before the bunnet found its way back to me. It was then I came to my senses, meekly returned the cap.
I got a promotion to admin work, looking after the activity sheets we completed on a weekly basis to secure extra payment. All the guys wrote up and submitted these fictitious details. All except Sandy. I quizzed him.
'I don't bother with those sheets.'
'You should. It means a lot more money.'
Sandy looked at me blankly. It was then I realised he couldn't read, or write.
The next time we were paid, Sandy looked happy.
'I filled in your sheet, want me to keep doing it?'
'Okay.'
I found another job but asked my successor to make sure he wrote up Sandy's sheet.
I still remember my last day at the summer job. I pigeonholed Sandy, told him I was leaving, that the next guy would make sure he got the bonus.
'All the best, Sandy,' I offered my hand.
I still remember he ignored the outstretched hand, looked down at his muddy boots.
Nice story ! the regrets are just suggested. The narrator doesn’t really get Sandy. It reminds me of Sandrine Bonnaires character in Chabrol film The ceremony.
You realize this is your Presentence Interview, don’t you? I’m going to recommend an appropriate sentence to the Court. You’ll do better if you say you’re sorry and you’ve learned something.
You bet. I say that I regret my bad choices, and you tell the Judge to go easier on me. Sure. I conned that idiot. Do you realize how much money I got?
I do. The victim says he lost nearly $550,000, as well as his marriage, because of you.
Well, I certainly don’t regret that his marriage ended. I know his wife and he’s better off without her. In fact, I bet that getting divorced isn’t on his list of regrets.
He might say that he regrets trusting me. But you know what? In the long run, he came out ahead. The money wasn’t too important to him, because he didn’t even miss it for five years. He probably still wouldn’t miss it if he hadn’t hired a new accountant. And even though he is whining now, I don’t think much has changed for him. Have you seen where he lives? He didn’t notice because he didn’t need the money and he was too busy exploiting his customers and his employees and his business partners and his awful wife, which apparently is entirely legal. So, he lost money he didn’t even appreciate, but now he’s free of his wife and he’s got an exciting story.
I’m like you. Working poor. I bet you make $70,000 with kids and a mortgage and a student loan and at the end of the month, you’re looking under the sofa cushions for lunch money.
I started in little dribs. Just enough to pay a doctor’s bill or to take the kid out for pizza on her birthday. And, when he didn’t care, it rubbed me the wrong way. I turned into some kind of Robin Hood redistributing what he stole to the poor – primarily me and my family but to others too. I gave money to friends, to strangers, to charities. I’d even give you some now, but I know that would make my situation even worse.
That’s who I am. If anything, I guess I’ve learned that I’m glad that I am who I am. We’ll see what I think in a few years, but I’m expecting I won’t be changing much. So, let me have it.
I wish I had not picked the penny up from the street. What adult picks up pennies? They're lucky charms for kids. But I plunked it in my purse. Crossed my fingers that it would be lucky for me. When I bent over, I missed the bus pulling up to my stop. I rose to exhaust up my nose and the billboard on the back of the bus sailing down the street. Beyonce wearing Tiffany jewelry, staring at me with smoke in her eyes, and the tag line Lose Yourself in Love. I requested an Uber. A beat-up Ford Fiesta pulled up minutes later.
"Get in," the man said. He had a gray and black beard, whiskers sharp as a briar patch. If I kissed him, miniature fountains of blood would spurt all around my mouth. "Lady, do you want a ride or not?"
"Yes, please. I thought you had a Honda Accord hybrid?"
"Oh, yeah, the wife took it for some errand. Probably to spend money. Women!"
I wish I had taken the ride with Mr. Sexist and his fender-bent car. But I didn't. I walked until one of the spike heels I wore for this date to make me look powerful, sleek, and in control, bent, twisting my ankle, propelling me sideways to meet the sidewalk hard with one knee. I wish I had called the hotel where I was meeting the man I found on Tinder, but my phone flew out of my purse and landed in a puddle of water. It didn't really matter, because I was in so much pain I couldn't move.
"Do you need help?" A young woman in gray sweatpants and a huge blue sweatshirt leaned over me.
"Yes, thank you! Would you please call an ambulance? I think I broke my ankle."
Ten minutes later, I was headed to the hospital. I wish I had not given them my married name. Because they called my emergency contact, who was my husband, as I was wheeled into surgery. I wish I had better control of my subconscious, which coming out of surgery moaned "Yes, yes, please, Sean, fuck me again." Because husband became ex, and money in the bank became credit card debt.
I wish I had money, but ex-husband, that sends me singing down the street in my thrifted red sneakers that radiate how few damns I give.
If Linney hadn’t hit her Sissy wouldn’t have the scar on her upper lip. Linney didn’t use her fist. In fact she hadn't touched her. Linney threw a stick at Sissy. The stick, though an inanimate object and on the small side, a small elm twig, forced her lip into a tooth and that tooth cut the skin and Sissy bled a lot. What a fricking thing to happen.
Let’s face it. Sissy is eighty years old now and that scar has disappeared and if Mother had taken her to the doctor, there would never have been a scar at all. So it’s Mother’s fault isn’t it?
Why did Linney throw the stick at her? Why do siblings argue? They were under the tall Dutch Elm tree by the swing set in the late afternoon. And the stick flew through the air and there was blood. Perhaps a bit of Magic!
That Dutch Elm tree died like all the other trees in the neighborhood on Plum Road. And they outgrew the swing set and forgot about the scar on Sissy’s lip and no one had any regrets.
Prompt by: what now?: Prompt #72 : TODAY’S PROMPT:: Write a story about regret.
Sally was a curious person. She has all these wonders about life so she signed up for a life affirming workshop. The discussion at the moment was about regrets.
“What is your biggest regret?” was the question asked of the group. Sally sat for a long time, stumped by her answer. She listened as the other members of the group poured out their regrets with varying emotions. After quite a while it was her turn.
“As I listened to everyone here, what I am hearing is what is my biggest, most important regret that I can share. I believe that initially, after something happens, we have regrets but in the long run they are not regrets. There is a sadness that things did not work out. I do not rue these events. I embrace them with gusto. They are the fuel that inspires me to grow.
Were they mistakes or missed opportunities? No. They are the propulsion to look at life in a different light, a direction pointer for what I want in my future, a foundation for improvement. I would not be who I am without the things that happened to me. Part of life is about learning and growing.
With that I am happy with the way things have worked out. They have made me who I am today.”
Sally sat down in her chair, placing her white cane at her feet.
If only we’d wrapped you in cotton wool. Hadn’t encouraged you to jump headfirst into everything— enthused over your energy, your boundless confidence, your rubbery agility. That time you flew over your bike’s handlebars and were only upset by the grazes in the red and yellow flames you and your father had sprayed over its sleek frame.
We loved that. He’s so thick skinned, he’d said. But you aren’t. You weren’t. You have the same weaknesses as all of us.
Why were you even on the field that day? Damn last-minute rescheduling. The merciless laws of physics, the frailty of anatomy. Damn rugby. I hate that I missed it all, that I was having my elective hysterectomy, those searing cramps nothing compared to having you torn away.
I hate that the other kid just hopped away, and your skull cracked, like it was one of those crackers you loved smothering with cheese and blitzing with microwaves.
Damn the tiny chance that you were playing against some the son of some sort of head collision expert. Fuck coincidence. Fuck expert men, so competent, so confident but know nothing about how resilient my eight-year boy is. Just a knock, don’t worry.
I hate the way you can’t see internal bleeding, until the sheen is faded from my little boy’s eyes. I’m sorry I couldn’t hold you that day or the next. That by the time I could, they’d already induced the coma to reduce the chance of permanent brain damage. Damn that long thin drill to ease the pressure, and the way it came building back.
I’m sorry the rhymes I read you were childish and that you couldn’t see the pictures anyway. That we never got to have awkward conversations about human reproduction or explore the rest of the world.
I’m sorry about the way your father cried and the way I didn’t look up from the black smudge left on the sheet by my mascara. I’m sorry I didn’t squeeze his hand. But love is weakness and I’ll not suffer that again.
“You’ll regret this!” He yelled, as she climbed into the car and revved the motor.
“Loser!” Eileen yelled out the open window. He was so pathetic!
Regret this? Will I? She thought, then glanced in the rearview mirror. He was a forlorn figure, growing smaller and smaller as she sped away. Standing there in just his tie-dyed t-shirt and socks.
A frigid wind. Late snow flurries in early April. The mud under her tires would be frozen solid in a few hours. By then, she would be long gone. Far from Theo and his pathetic whining. She never promised him she’d be faithful. And he never demanded answers–just stared at her with his liquid, brown puppy eyes. Eyes that asked “How could you?”
How could she? Easy. She simply could. Never a regret. Never a second thought, if she stopped to think about it. Which she didn’t. Not even now as—wait! What was that? She slammed on the brakes.
Theo perched on a snowbank at the side of the road, pulling his t-shirt down as far as it would go with one hand and thumbing for a ride with the other. His teeth chattered, the skin on his legs and arms red, then blue, and white with cold. His feet–once throbbing–were numb. An icicle of snot froze to the end of his nose, and his eyelids were stiff with frozen tears. He had nearly given up–succumbing to the inevitable when a pair of headlights flooded the highway shoulder and he lifted one frozen arm to wave in a jerky arc.
The car stopped and a woman got out. She reached into the backseat and pulled out a fluffy blanket.
“Oh you poor dear!” She cried, as she wrapped it around him, discreetly pulling it across the tops of his legs. She helped him climb into the passenger seat, and put the car’s heater on low–
“I don’t think you’re supposed to warm too quickly. But I regret not paying more attention in my first aid course.”
Years later, Lizette was watching Theo play with their two children. The story of how Theo came to be standing on the side of the road clad only in his socks and t-shirt was lost in obscurity. As was the crumpled car she and Theo had passed on the road on their way to the local hospital that night.
Just in case Lisa arrives you dare not go too far from the door. Drawn to the books written by Jared Dimond you linger near his notably pessimistic titles. Collapse. Upheaval. Guns, Germs and Steel. The World Until Yesterday. The Last Tree on Easter Island. You ask, was the invention of agriculture the worst mistake in human history, as Diamond claimed? What if humans had never begun to plant seeds? What if they never tamed goats, sheep and cows but continued to hunt and forage? Would we be any happier than we are now? We would be surrounded by our families and close relations people we knew intimately and trusted. Today people speak of an epidemic of loneliness. Any hunter who was lonely would’ve been dead. Everyone depended upon one another. Men and women talked things over and agreed together upon what needed to be done or when it was time to move the camp to another location. No one had authority over another. Are we happier now than we were then? The grandmothers and grandfathers were respected for their wisdom. They knew when berries and fruits were in season and knew where to find them. People sat around their fires in the evening and told stories that passed on their wisdom and knowledge of survival. You walk through the aisles and see the Wellness section and ask yourself, but what if we had never invented medicines, plows and reapers, I might not be here today. Back then there were no medicines, except the ones that grew in the forest, near streams, and on the grasslands but neither were there epidemics. More children died then, but fewer men, women and children died in war. There were no wars. Nor slavery. People sometimes died of starvation but people die of starvation now in war-torn countries and in places where drought has kept the rains from falling, or where the heat is now so intense crops die in the field, and storms flood the land and entire forests and cities burn. Are we really any better off now than we were then, when people walked everywhere? When there were no animals to ride nor cars or airplanes burning fossil fuels and polluting the air? And yet men and women work harder today than ever before to maintain a lifestyle of comfort as they race here and there to their jobs. Are they any happier now than our ancestors were back then?
Kevin, I had to think a bit about that video. I've only studied the near-eastern and European Neolithic, during which agriculture preceded the development of pottery in the Levant and Anatolia, but the eastern Neolithic had a different timetable. I questioned whether that chunk of clay had been a pot (but who am I to say differently?), and also questioned the way they recreated pottery making, since I had always thought coil-building was the earliest form of making a pot. Wikipedia says the Japenese Jomon Pottery is the oldest known pottery, having been developed 10,500 BC. Check it out--its the most elegant pottery I've ever seen and was made by coil-building techniques.
It's fascinating to contemplate people realizing that their firepit could be repurposed into a portable container. Then, someone decided to try the coil method. Why? Did they try pieces of clay stuck together and then eventually come up with long strings? And people still make pots that way today.
Bullet in the Brain is right up there with The Lottery and Powder on my favorite short stories list. Oh, and The Swimmer. Looking forward to seeing what you all come up with.
NO REGRETS?
He has regrets. Why would you think he hadn’t any? Everyone has regrets, it’s like saying everyone has an itch. It’s just that you don’t necessarily see everyone scratch. You know, dig into their own skin until it is red and inflamed. It’s just that some people never tell you they regret, like they itch but you never see them scratch.
Even the Devil? Does he have regrets?
Indeed. Satan thrives on regrets. His list of regrets is like an electron. It keeps growing by getting thinner as it expands.
OK. Skip the Devil. What does God regret? Does he regret making the earth round, putting zinc in the ground, giving puppies beguiling eyes, parting the Red Sea?
Well, there is Saul who never lived up to his ability to successfully lead the Israelites. Saul didn’t meet God’s expectations. God wasn’t good at selecting kings. Look at David, he had to be chastised.
What’s your point? I rarely understand, get your message.
Oh. There isn’t any. I’m just trying to follow instructions. I’m usually pretty good at that.
Ruth, I regret that this piece came to an end.
Hahahaha! I love your stuff, Ruth.
I love this, Ruth. The idea of God sitting somewhere (hidden in the crowd?) and regretting some of her decisions. Good stuff.
Yes, definitely hidden in a crowd.
. . . and its up to You to finish Her story! :)
I agree that the Satan thrives on regrets, but only the regrets of others, meaning all of mankind. They feed him and sustain him. But I think as the Devil, he never questions anything he's done. He just makes sure that's not the case with any of us.
Nice piece, thought provoking. Especially imagining God's regrets
Ruth,I LOVE your Biblical send-ups. We must have been twins separated at birth. I'll have to dig up my poem called How to Start a Religion!
Yes, I will enjoy that. please send it
I liked the itch <--- > regret interplay!
I particularly love your description of Satan's regret's and God's. Well done, Ruth!
If only she hadn’t left her cell phone on the table in the coffee room. If only Frank hadn’t picked it up. If only she hadn’t chosen the passcode “010203” which she realizes with a thud, was little better than no passcode at all. If only she hadn’t bragged. That was her downfall, bragging, and to Ralph, for Pete’s sake, poor Ralph who was amazed at how easy it had been to siphon money out of the company bank account. It was cool, impressing Ralph, but then Ralph was easily amused. If only she hadn’t bragged on a TEXT. God, how stupid was that? She hadn’t wanted to do it. It was Francine’s fault, of course. If only she hadn’t met Francine, her devious little mind, her flirty smile. Her designer clothes. And those BOOTS. That was what did it. If only she hadn’t been jealous of Francine. If only Francine hadn’t given her the idea.
I love the real feel of this one. The way we rationalize in chained thoughts.
yes, fantastic point. The way it just keeps rolling and weaving and escalating.
Francine and this woman deserve a short story. Not to mention Frank and Ralph.
the boots made her do it.....i wanna know more about those great boots
These boots are made for walkin.
I love the characters. If only I knew more about them. Ahem. The repetition works really well!
Very enticing all the associated stories… and of course those boots !
If only I had . . . what ?
What’s regretted? Not going to Vietnam? My part in abortions?
Twenty years to finish college?
And just what will you do with a degree in anthropology, she asked.
Duh. Dig the earth in grids. Look for bones and the stone tools they used to kill mammoths.
One regret is never drilling the Greenland ice a mile deep to check the pollen there.
Regrets, not more time outside in starlight. Unhonest communication by virtue of omissions.
Calculated retreats from one place or another of responsibilities. Shirking?
There must have been some but I don’t remember much.
Regrets not being a sentry for picketed horses during the Civil War battle of Antietam.
Of finding a cure for pneumonia before he died of it.
Conversely not regretting quitting smoking, or walking all those miles, beforehand, for a Camel.
So it goes. Frankly I regret it took so long to learn what great sex is. But don’t regret sex.
Really it’s what it is in its own time so in fact no regrets in that department.
Which makes me wonder what I do really regret. I can’t think of anything, because when someone asks would you go back and do it all over again the answer is No.
Not even the Greenland pollen or undiscovered mammoth bones. Huh.
And I didn’t really want to be a sentry in the Civil War after all.
Wouldn’t change a thing. Right, do stupid things all over again.
It's starting to sound like regrets and no regrets are the same thing.
But then I think of all the good things I could have done as a billionaire.
Instead people say they’re envious of my lifestyle based on having no money.
No regrets there either, only minor sellouts along the way, also unremembered.
Which is what happens at some point, everything unremembered.
A convenience actually, when you get closer and closer to, you know,
climbing into bed with the reaper.
It's funny how there are things you think you might have liked but on further thought realized, nah, like being a sentry in the Civil War.
From one never-was-an-anthropologist to another, well done.
I have a very good friend, an anthropologist from the University of Chicago, who after graduation never worked a day in her life... oops,, she was a cashier at In-N-Out Burger for about six months.
Yeah, well after studying anthropology for several years and figuring out the scoop on the human race you realize there's little point in working.
Except I suspect your friend might have enjoyed special circumstances.
No, she didn't. She was an unemployed minority waitress and unwed mother from Little Rock, Arkansas with one pair of work shoes.
OOOPs! I mean YES! Her husband held a similar degree in archeology.
Of all college majors Anthropology ranks last in job opportunities. That's probably why I was an Anthropology major.
Seems like I got lucky. Way back in '72.
First of five preference. 'Geography & Anthropology'; just six places; at Durham.
Got off the Inter-City - was it even brand labelled, back in the day? - at Central Station, having just crossed The Tyne for the first time. Walked at pace up the curve of Georgian Grey Street; took in the neo-classical portico of The Theatre Royal; made it, just, into the Daysh Building, in time, for interview.
Strolling back down towards Tyne, to await the tea time, take me back to Middle England train, realised I'd fallen in love with Newcastle, 'Fog on the Tyne' n'all, was going to be 'Mine all mine'... and it was for six years, though the Anthropology was dropped, informally it stuck, still does to this day... nothing like digging up an Etruscan Urn and penning an Ode to about it.
Not that Anthrpological was the line of work I went into. Geography got me into work and the rest is History. Not least how I came to be employed and to spend most of my career as a Marketing, Management & Business Educator.
No regrets worth mentioning but worth saying that 'Egrets? I've had a few' amongst the most enjoyed drawn artworks to have hung well on and long graced one part of one of our walls.
Gillian Tett* is an exemplar of how study of the doubly arcane combo Archaeology & Anthropologist can lead a body to make one or more contemporary marks that will tend to will leave a longer term note in the annals of local, UK, History!
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gillian_Tett
You have the image of a derelict!
Thanks Kevin.
Conversely not regretting quitting smoking, or walking all those miles, beforehand, for a Camel.So it goes. Frankly I regret it took so long to learn what great sex is. But don’t regret sex.
What does great sex have to do with camels? I want to read THAT one.
You know, those big animals, all that sandy space, and then, an oasis with nice thick oriental carpets . . . must be something there.
See? I'm not crazy.
I want to know if it's the camels having the great sex, and that's making my mind boggle. But I don't regret it.
Ending with the unremembered being a part of it, isn’t that the truth.
Your last line has me wondering about the reaper's sex life, now. Does he have regrets?
You'd have to ask the reaper.
I wonder, is the reaper male always, or can "he" go both ways. I mean a female reaper, which only seems fair, don't you think?
In Neil Gaiman's (don't hit me anyone, I'm just the messenger here) Sandman, the reaper is a woman. Chatting away with her brother as she makes her rounds.
All right, that's good to know. :)
As usual, this is charming or something like that.
If only I had gone to Yale.
The younger four of us were all born one after another, so were all going to be in college at the same time. For my middle class-parents, this meant that we were all going to a state school – anything else would be unfair to the other siblings. But here’s the thing: I wasn’t like my siblings. I was ranked number 4 in my class of 750. A national Merit Scholar. SAT scores way up there. Rave references from teachers. Three aced AP courses. Four years of Drama Society productions, including writing a children’s play and touring the surrounding elementary schools. I would have gotten in.
What my parents seemed to willfully ignore was that Yale was a very wealthy institution. I would have gotten a lot of financial aid, a lot more than I got at Stony Brook, or later at NYU, (where I eventually transferred anyway.)
Why does it stick in my craw, all these years later? Because what I only realized later on, in my 20s, was that the professional trajectory of my friends who went to Ivy League schools went far more dramatically upward than my own. It had far less to do with the prestige of the school name on your resume than it did with the quality of the roommates you made, the friends you bonded with. Stony Brook was full of students who grew up in towns like Levittown and Hicksville. They didn’t take you home to their family estates for Easter break, or on a three-day ski trip to Vermont. If you needed funding for your student film, you were a helluva lot more likely to find it through the Dad of your lead actress, who’d unblinkingly write a check. College was about making lifelong friends, no matter where you go. I would have loved my well-heeled friends just as much as the friends I did make.
Oh, the fantasy alternative futures I created from the “what-if-I-had-gone-to-Yale” fantasy, one leading to life as a tenured professor in French Literature at some leafy liberal arts college, the other to the Yale School of Drama, and life as a playwright and director. But I’m lucid enough to realize in that alternative future, I’m responding to this same post right now, wondering why I didn’t go to NYU Film School and pursue a screenwriting career. Go figure.
Love the way you ask that important question in the middle and then let the answers unfold. A bit of "The Road Not Taken," here.
I am an alumnus of an elite New England prep school that sent many graduates to Ivy League schools ( but not me ). No question the old boy networks still work, though probably less than a couple of generations ago. The writer Edward Hoagland once noted how many of these "elites" ended up "company men." While I wouldn't deny the advantages of privilege, one can I think live a creative and meaningful life without it. You might find that world to your liking, but you also might find it a place of conformity, convention, and compromise.
Oh, Yale also produced Paul Rudnick and Tony Kushner, and I think I would have run with the Yale School of Drama crowd and written some super cool plays. Or with the Romance Languages crowd. Chockful of super- smart gays in both places. I certainly had no problem living a "creative and meaningful life" without Yale! It's not as much a regret as a much as a "If-I-had=it-to-do-all-over-again." In fact I spent a year and one half in France between high school and college, learning it quite fluently, and only spent a year at Stony Brook before transferring to NYU and going to film school. And made this, which is impossible to regret having made. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7x27vmzFrg
Yes Mark, you would have run with the super cool Yale School of Drama students...and this is a super cool film. Thank you for posting it.
I know because Paul Rudnik wrote "Farrell Covington and the Limits of Style" and the way he described the experience of Yale during those very years let me know it would have been very much my experience. And then I could have gone to France for my Junior Year Abroad when I would have been far more mature than when I was 17. And my disastrous lover was 28, not my own age like David in the film.
Thanks for your kind words Ruth.
Thanks for sharing Mark. Very moving.
Class mobility is fascinating, great one, Mark. Many of us wonder about this stuff.
I actually have thought so much about this that I wrote a piece long ago that is one of my favorite ever, called "Mr. Olmsted's Regrets," (rewritten twice over the years) It's not terribly long, just too long for the 400 words limit, but if you dig my writing, you'll dig this, I think. https://open.substack.com/pub/markolmsted/p/mr-olmsteds-regrets?r=as8m0&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
I could have been a bone digger, you know. Do you remember that? Or pottery or arrowheads. I could have gone that summer to Colorado and spent weeks on my hands and knees with a toothbrush and a trowel separating dirt from artifact, recording each shard in a notebook. I could have dug up remnants that archaeologists would still be piecing together, telling the story of a lost world. Or I might even have found the missing link that answered every question.
Instead I stayed home. Love tethered me. First love. Love for someone who, I thought, knew more than I did about everything, felt more about life than I ever knew possible, someone who had eyes so deeply brown, a smile so easy and welcoming, that I absorbed myself into that presence. You.
You talked to me all that summer of books and ideas and plans. So I read Hesse and Nietzsche. I saw myself in those plans (did you know that?), imagining with you as we turned every corner, explored every detour. I dismissed thoughts of ancient Colorado. We were together.
But the summer ended. My impetuous and heartfelt — and doomed — gesture slammed the door on us.
I always wondered, did you go on to live out your plans? Was I in your mind when you told them to me? Did you even know that I would have walked inside them with you?
I spent a good part of my life regretting what I missed in Colorado and the heartbreak I found at home.
It’s strange, I began to think, to regret both the action not taken and the action taken instead.
So I came to regret that regretting. I realized I could never know if I would have found the key to a civilization or the answers to a teenager’s heartbreak. So what, I thought. Haven't you wasted enough time, I asked myself. Nothing to be done. And then we met again, funeral of a friend.
You told me you don’t read those books anymore; didn’t remember reading them, for that matter. You got through life. And your eyes are shallow, and your smile hesitates.
And I'm done, now, with regret. I'm putting here on the page the hypothetical Colorado and the real immersion in you, and the real loss of you, artifacts of a life I'm still living.
I was offered a summer position in an archeological dig in Maine with one of my professors. No pay ! I was 40, had a child, and couldn't afford to work without pay. I didn't really regret it as the bones and stones part of anthropology didn't interest me as much as the cultural stuff like economics and social systems and how people made or didn't make decisions affecting their existence. The Norse settlement of Greenland is the most fascinating stories ever. I've read that over in over and it never fails to remind me how irrational humans are. An analogy today would be how we manage to ignore climate change.
There are analogies throughout history for almost anything humans can do. Probably not 'almost' but everything human. People might study history in the hopes of not repeating it, but that fails time and again, human nature being what it is. The one thing studying history does is remind me we living today didn't invent our current situations.
I like the ones that feel utterly autobiographical and that I can certainly identify with. And how Tod Cheney and you both happened to make archeological references.
I could have been a bone digger is a fantastic opening!
Kevin, those final sentences. Stabbing, so full of feeling. Nicely done.
oh, the artifacts of life
Regrets regretting, I like the twists of this story.
This had a great roll, right to the end.
40 years and I still remember Sandy.
I still remember being introduced to the awkward man with big, permanently startled eyes, a mouth shut tight, an unshaven chin; all below a careworn bunnet, drawn down to just above the startled eyes. Soiled dungarees tucked inside muddy wellingtons completed the sad look. But Sandy was vigorous, the most energetic of a small 'summer job' team sent to clear roadside ditches. The small team was made up of assorted duckers and divers, Sandy the nominated supervisor. While we ducked and dived, Sandy toiled. Wilson was King Rogue, any energy he expended, was in belittling the 'easy to belittle' supervisor. I knew Wilson for a bully and a loud mouth, still best to keep on his good side, ignore the sneering. And to join in the impromptu Friday party. Wilson sneaked away, returned with a case of beers, 'We deserve a reward after a hard week.' We drank and laughed while Sandy cleared ditches. The beer drained, Wilson looked around to keep the party spirit alive. We ventured towards Sandy. Later I would claim it was the booze, an explanation for why I grabbed his bunnet.
Wilson howled, 'Look guys, the old fool's bald as a badger.' They all laughed. I laughed too and tossed the bunnet high in the air. Sandy flapped about trying to recover the cap, trying to recover his dignity. They took turns taunting him with further skyward tosses before the bunnet found its way back to me. It was then I came to my senses, meekly returned the cap.
I got a promotion to admin work, looking after the activity sheets we completed on a weekly basis to secure extra payment. All the guys wrote up and submitted these fictitious details. All except Sandy. I quizzed him.
'I don't bother with those sheets.'
'You should. It means a lot more money.'
Sandy looked at me blankly. It was then I realised he couldn't read, or write.
The next time we were paid, Sandy looked happy.
'I filled in your sheet, want me to keep doing it?'
'Okay.'
I found another job but asked my successor to make sure he wrote up Sandy's sheet.
I still remember my last day at the summer job. I pigeonholed Sandy, told him I was leaving, that the next guy would make sure he got the bonus.
'All the best, Sandy,' I offered my hand.
I still remember he ignored the outstretched hand, looked down at his muddy boots.
Nice story ! the regrets are just suggested. The narrator doesn’t really get Sandy. It reminds me of Sandrine Bonnaires character in Chabrol film The ceremony.
Thanks, Karen, I need to check out that film.
Actually...two great characters.
Thanks, Angela. Regrets, often come people-shaped.
Great character!
Terry this is a great short story. Loved reading it.
Thanks, Sea. Glad you enjoyed this tale.
I don’t have any regrets.
You realize this is your Presentence Interview, don’t you? I’m going to recommend an appropriate sentence to the Court. You’ll do better if you say you’re sorry and you’ve learned something.
You bet. I say that I regret my bad choices, and you tell the Judge to go easier on me. Sure. I conned that idiot. Do you realize how much money I got?
I do. The victim says he lost nearly $550,000, as well as his marriage, because of you.
Well, I certainly don’t regret that his marriage ended. I know his wife and he’s better off without her. In fact, I bet that getting divorced isn’t on his list of regrets.
He might say that he regrets trusting me. But you know what? In the long run, he came out ahead. The money wasn’t too important to him, because he didn’t even miss it for five years. He probably still wouldn’t miss it if he hadn’t hired a new accountant. And even though he is whining now, I don’t think much has changed for him. Have you seen where he lives? He didn’t notice because he didn’t need the money and he was too busy exploiting his customers and his employees and his business partners and his awful wife, which apparently is entirely legal. So, he lost money he didn’t even appreciate, but now he’s free of his wife and he’s got an exciting story.
I’m like you. Working poor. I bet you make $70,000 with kids and a mortgage and a student loan and at the end of the month, you’re looking under the sofa cushions for lunch money.
I started in little dribs. Just enough to pay a doctor’s bill or to take the kid out for pizza on her birthday. And, when he didn’t care, it rubbed me the wrong way. I turned into some kind of Robin Hood redistributing what he stole to the poor – primarily me and my family but to others too. I gave money to friends, to strangers, to charities. I’d even give you some now, but I know that would make my situation even worse.
That’s who I am. If anything, I guess I’ve learned that I’m glad that I am who I am. We’ll see what I think in a few years, but I’m expecting I won’t be changing much. So, let me have it.
wow
I'm looking forward to a Presentence Interview. May I use this as an outline?
you bet!
Oh! Great one!
Another great character you could take places. So good.
[Verse 2] MY WAY, Frank Sinatra; perhaps a funeral song
Regrets, I've had a few
But then again, too few to mention
I did what I had to do
And saw it through without exemption
I planned each charted course
Each careful step along the byway
And more, much more than this
I did it my way
Lose Yourself in Love
I wish I had not picked the penny up from the street. What adult picks up pennies? They're lucky charms for kids. But I plunked it in my purse. Crossed my fingers that it would be lucky for me. When I bent over, I missed the bus pulling up to my stop. I rose to exhaust up my nose and the billboard on the back of the bus sailing down the street. Beyonce wearing Tiffany jewelry, staring at me with smoke in her eyes, and the tag line Lose Yourself in Love. I requested an Uber. A beat-up Ford Fiesta pulled up minutes later.
"Get in," the man said. He had a gray and black beard, whiskers sharp as a briar patch. If I kissed him, miniature fountains of blood would spurt all around my mouth. "Lady, do you want a ride or not?"
"Yes, please. I thought you had a Honda Accord hybrid?"
"Oh, yeah, the wife took it for some errand. Probably to spend money. Women!"
I wish I had taken the ride with Mr. Sexist and his fender-bent car. But I didn't. I walked until one of the spike heels I wore for this date to make me look powerful, sleek, and in control, bent, twisting my ankle, propelling me sideways to meet the sidewalk hard with one knee. I wish I had called the hotel where I was meeting the man I found on Tinder, but my phone flew out of my purse and landed in a puddle of water. It didn't really matter, because I was in so much pain I couldn't move.
"Do you need help?" A young woman in gray sweatpants and a huge blue sweatshirt leaned over me.
"Yes, thank you! Would you please call an ambulance? I think I broke my ankle."
Ten minutes later, I was headed to the hospital. I wish I had not given them my married name. Because they called my emergency contact, who was my husband, as I was wheeled into surgery. I wish I had better control of my subconscious, which coming out of surgery moaned "Yes, yes, please, Sean, fuck me again." Because husband became ex, and money in the bank became credit card debt.
I wish I had money, but ex-husband, that sends me singing down the street in my thrifted red sneakers that radiate how few damns I give.
Whoa! Love the series of unfortunate events in this one with her moaning Sean’s name! Well done!
Thanks! It was fun to write.
Well, what the flip!
At least you have the sense not to complain:) !!!!
Ha, ha! Thanks for reading and commenting.
If Linney hadn’t hit her Sissy wouldn’t have the scar on her upper lip. Linney didn’t use her fist. In fact she hadn't touched her. Linney threw a stick at Sissy. The stick, though an inanimate object and on the small side, a small elm twig, forced her lip into a tooth and that tooth cut the skin and Sissy bled a lot. What a fricking thing to happen.
Let’s face it. Sissy is eighty years old now and that scar has disappeared and if Mother had taken her to the doctor, there would never have been a scar at all. So it’s Mother’s fault isn’t it?
Why did Linney throw the stick at her? Why do siblings argue? They were under the tall Dutch Elm tree by the swing set in the late afternoon. And the stick flew through the air and there was blood. Perhaps a bit of Magic!
That Dutch Elm tree died like all the other trees in the neighborhood on Plum Road. And they outgrew the swing set and forgot about the scar on Sissy’s lip and no one had any regrets.
time should be as kind as this to all sibling squabblers.
Moments To Rue
Prompt by: what now?: Prompt #72 : TODAY’S PROMPT:: Write a story about regret.
Sally was a curious person. She has all these wonders about life so she signed up for a life affirming workshop. The discussion at the moment was about regrets.
“What is your biggest regret?” was the question asked of the group. Sally sat for a long time, stumped by her answer. She listened as the other members of the group poured out their regrets with varying emotions. After quite a while it was her turn.
“As I listened to everyone here, what I am hearing is what is my biggest, most important regret that I can share. I believe that initially, after something happens, we have regrets but in the long run they are not regrets. There is a sadness that things did not work out. I do not rue these events. I embrace them with gusto. They are the fuel that inspires me to grow.
Were they mistakes or missed opportunities? No. They are the propulsion to look at life in a different light, a direction pointer for what I want in my future, a foundation for improvement. I would not be who I am without the things that happened to me. Part of life is about learning and growing.
With that I am happy with the way things have worked out. They have made me who I am today.”
Sally sat down in her chair, placing her white cane at her feet.
Ooh! Love the message you weave into this and that ending. Well done!
Thank you.
If only we’d wrapped you in cotton wool. Hadn’t encouraged you to jump headfirst into everything— enthused over your energy, your boundless confidence, your rubbery agility. That time you flew over your bike’s handlebars and were only upset by the grazes in the red and yellow flames you and your father had sprayed over its sleek frame.
We loved that. He’s so thick skinned, he’d said. But you aren’t. You weren’t. You have the same weaknesses as all of us.
Why were you even on the field that day? Damn last-minute rescheduling. The merciless laws of physics, the frailty of anatomy. Damn rugby. I hate that I missed it all, that I was having my elective hysterectomy, those searing cramps nothing compared to having you torn away.
I hate that the other kid just hopped away, and your skull cracked, like it was one of those crackers you loved smothering with cheese and blitzing with microwaves.
Damn the tiny chance that you were playing against some the son of some sort of head collision expert. Fuck coincidence. Fuck expert men, so competent, so confident but know nothing about how resilient my eight-year boy is. Just a knock, don’t worry.
I hate the way you can’t see internal bleeding, until the sheen is faded from my little boy’s eyes. I’m sorry I couldn’t hold you that day or the next. That by the time I could, they’d already induced the coma to reduce the chance of permanent brain damage. Damn that long thin drill to ease the pressure, and the way it came building back.
I’m sorry the rhymes I read you were childish and that you couldn’t see the pictures anyway. That we never got to have awkward conversations about human reproduction or explore the rest of the world.
I’m sorry about the way your father cried and the way I didn’t look up from the black smudge left on the sheet by my mascara. I’m sorry I didn’t squeeze his hand. But love is weakness and I’ll not suffer that again.
Gerard, this unfolds like a slow motion film. Well done.
Thank you Christine, love that description.
Devastating piece—vivid sensory descriptions and images.
“You’ll regret this!” He yelled, as she climbed into the car and revved the motor.
“Loser!” Eileen yelled out the open window. He was so pathetic!
Regret this? Will I? She thought, then glanced in the rearview mirror. He was a forlorn figure, growing smaller and smaller as she sped away. Standing there in just his tie-dyed t-shirt and socks.
A frigid wind. Late snow flurries in early April. The mud under her tires would be frozen solid in a few hours. By then, she would be long gone. Far from Theo and his pathetic whining. She never promised him she’d be faithful. And he never demanded answers–just stared at her with his liquid, brown puppy eyes. Eyes that asked “How could you?”
How could she? Easy. She simply could. Never a regret. Never a second thought, if she stopped to think about it. Which she didn’t. Not even now as—wait! What was that? She slammed on the brakes.
Theo perched on a snowbank at the side of the road, pulling his t-shirt down as far as it would go with one hand and thumbing for a ride with the other. His teeth chattered, the skin on his legs and arms red, then blue, and white with cold. His feet–once throbbing–were numb. An icicle of snot froze to the end of his nose, and his eyelids were stiff with frozen tears. He had nearly given up–succumbing to the inevitable when a pair of headlights flooded the highway shoulder and he lifted one frozen arm to wave in a jerky arc.
The car stopped and a woman got out. She reached into the backseat and pulled out a fluffy blanket.
“Oh you poor dear!” She cried, as she wrapped it around him, discreetly pulling it across the tops of his legs. She helped him climb into the passenger seat, and put the car’s heater on low–
“I don’t think you’re supposed to warm too quickly. But I regret not paying more attention in my first aid course.”
Years later, Lizette was watching Theo play with their two children. The story of how Theo came to be standing on the side of the road clad only in his socks and t-shirt was lost in obscurity. As was the crumpled car she and Theo had passed on the road on their way to the local hospital that night.
No regrets, she thought.
I hope Theo didn't warm too quickly. I think I had coffee with him a couple of times in Rapid City, North Dakota.
Time Loop #15:
Just in case Lisa arrives you dare not go too far from the door. Drawn to the books written by Jared Dimond you linger near his notably pessimistic titles. Collapse. Upheaval. Guns, Germs and Steel. The World Until Yesterday. The Last Tree on Easter Island. You ask, was the invention of agriculture the worst mistake in human history, as Diamond claimed? What if humans had never begun to plant seeds? What if they never tamed goats, sheep and cows but continued to hunt and forage? Would we be any happier than we are now? We would be surrounded by our families and close relations people we knew intimately and trusted. Today people speak of an epidemic of loneliness. Any hunter who was lonely would’ve been dead. Everyone depended upon one another. Men and women talked things over and agreed together upon what needed to be done or when it was time to move the camp to another location. No one had authority over another. Are we happier now than we were then? The grandmothers and grandfathers were respected for their wisdom. They knew when berries and fruits were in season and knew where to find them. People sat around their fires in the evening and told stories that passed on their wisdom and knowledge of survival. You walk through the aisles and see the Wellness section and ask yourself, but what if we had never invented medicines, plows and reapers, I might not be here today. Back then there were no medicines, except the ones that grew in the forest, near streams, and on the grasslands but neither were there epidemics. More children died then, but fewer men, women and children died in war. There were no wars. Nor slavery. People sometimes died of starvation but people die of starvation now in war-torn countries and in places where drought has kept the rains from falling, or where the heat is now so intense crops die in the field, and storms flood the land and entire forests and cities burn. Are we really any better off now than we were then, when people walked everywhere? When there were no animals to ride nor cars or airplanes burning fossil fuels and polluting the air? And yet men and women work harder today than ever before to maintain a lifestyle of comfort as they race here and there to their jobs. Are they any happier now than our ancestors were back then?
It's the pottery that did in the hunter gatherer lifestyle. BBC reports: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEKigDTf3zc)
Kevin, I had to think a bit about that video. I've only studied the near-eastern and European Neolithic, during which agriculture preceded the development of pottery in the Levant and Anatolia, but the eastern Neolithic had a different timetable. I questioned whether that chunk of clay had been a pot (but who am I to say differently?), and also questioned the way they recreated pottery making, since I had always thought coil-building was the earliest form of making a pot. Wikipedia says the Japenese Jomon Pottery is the oldest known pottery, having been developed 10,500 BC. Check it out--its the most elegant pottery I've ever seen and was made by coil-building techniques.
I take that back--here's more evidence that that pottery shard was indeed a pot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pottery#:~:text=Sherds%20have%20been%20found%20in,the%20Jiangxi%20province%20of%20China.
It's fascinating to contemplate people realizing that their firepit could be repurposed into a portable container. Then, someone decided to try the coil method. Why? Did they try pieces of clay stuck together and then eventually come up with long strings? And people still make pots that way today.
Bullet in the Brain is right up there with The Lottery and Powder on my favorite short stories list. Oh, and The Swimmer. Looking forward to seeing what you all come up with.
Happy Travels Mary! And thank you so very much for taking care of us while you're away!