Have you ever had things you wish you’d done differently, and you’d like to help others avoid making same mistakes? I know I do…
Like ever making any of the recipes in this Dean and Deluca cookbook. I tried 2 of them, and the second recipe I tried was voted the worst thing I’ve ever cooked by the whole family. I actually fed it to the dogs. Good thing I got it at the library and didn’t actually purchase it..I also got Caprial Cooks for Friends from the library at the same time, and got a recipe from that for a spicy mango glazed pork tenderloin that was the best thing I’ve made in a while. If I had it to do again, I would have made more stuff from the Caprial book…and left the other one on the shelf, pretty pictures and all.
I bought the curved shaft model of weed trimmer because it was cheaper. I wish I’d just spent the extra $ for the straight shaft because it would have made the job easier.
I planted a nice shade garden around my front door a few summers ago…I wish I had realized that my dogs loved lying in the cool dirt there so much before I put the plants in.
I have a track-off mat in my kitchen to catch all the snow that falls off the kids boots and stuff…I wish I had gotten the bigger version so it would have room for 4 kids to take of their snowy stuff when they come in from sledding…
When I had a neighbor who was unkind to me because I’m single, yet still sent her kids over to my house to play in the summer afternoons because she didn’t want to deal with them and they would start fights with my kids, I’d politely tell her that I’m not interested in providing free babysitting services a lot sooner than I did.
I’m sure I can think of a few more…what would you do differently?
There are plenty more, but an immediate mistake of mine is not getting coffee right away so the brain fog is still thick. Thx for the kick-starter CG
Coffee is critical of course…thanks for playing, ManEe! 🙂
One word: Betamax.
And I think Sony’s fondness for proprietary formats that don’t work with anything but their own products continues at some level to this day, to their detriment. I’m thinking of some of their camera equipment…
which reminds me that I wish that I gotten the PHD (push here, dummy) camera with the lithium ion battery rather than rechargeable AAs, which are easily replaced with regular AAs in an emergency, but lose their charge way too fast.
Yep, Sony did it then and still does it now. Those memory stick thingies are yet another example. I won’t be fooled again.
Lets just say I never had betamax, andhad to learn the same lesson somewhere else. 🙂
Can I extoll the virtues of my nikon D40, it’s memory card compatibility, and it’s incredible battery life here?
I may get one of those for my birthday. I see that they’ve added $200.00 to the price with the advent of the D40X. I hope the non-x version is still available when I’m ready. Which brings to mind another mistake, the Samsung camera I got about 2 years ago, now superseded by my Nikon point and shoot.
I would have waited to have kids. Most of my friends still have young kids and mine are mostly gone now….the little creeps. I think I would have been a better mother with some years, and wisdom, under my belt.
I would have gone ahead and bought quality things, like furniture and appliances, instead of trying to save money by gettng cheaper ones that I hated or broke down well before their time. I’m sure I would have spent less that way.
I never would have gone through that horrible, dusty blue color scheme from the early 90s.
I would have worn fishnets in the 70s even though my mother wouldn’t let me. It was my only chance to look sexy and slutty and I didn’t know it at the time.
I would have listened to my mother when she said that no one should get married before they’re thirty. Unfortunately, it took me till I was thirty to understand, and by then it was too late.
I will never again buy a coffee maker with a basket filter system. Given that I drink a lot of coffee, I splurged a few years ago on a really nice new coffee maker. It’s a great coffee maker, but the damn basket filters suck. Once or twice a week, the filter will fold over on itself, resulting in weak coffee full of coffee grinds. I have to toss the entire pot and start over. Not fun when you are rushing in the morning.
Unlike WWs, this one I can solve. Buy a permanent filter (screen) that you toss in the dishwasher. Five bucks.
I have one, but no dishwasher. It’s a bloody mess to clean, especially since I have no garbage disposal either, so I can’t just run under the faucet in the sink. Also, I am just way too lazy to clean that mess every day. But, thanks for the suggestion.
I would have forced my daughter to talk with me directly sooner when she chose to distance herself at the age of 19. She didn’t speak a word to me directly, even over the phone or in print, for the last five months of her life. I’ll never even know why, now. I’ll never let one of my children go more than a few weeks refusing to respond to me again, even when they get to be adults.
I would make myself make the third scheduled stop of the day to visit relatives on my second son’s 5th day in the world, even though he was so young and we were so tired. My grandfather was next on the list and he had a stroke in the wee hours the next morning. He died the next day, and though I brought a newborn into the ICU to put his hand in the hand of his great grandfather’s so they could meet once here on earth, he was never held by his greatgrandfather on that side.
It is so so difficult to be the parent of young adults as they move out into the world. How could you know that the distance wasn’t a necessary part of her maturing process? I walk a tight line between wanting to know where my kids are all the time and knowing that they need their independence. And if you push you might push them away forever. My heart is with you on that one, WW.
Thank you. I didn’t want to push, which is why I let it go so long, and when she stopped returning even phone calls I started to write. But I was right at the point where I was going to go and have a face to face meeting unannounced when the accident happened. Never again.
love the sig.
Should we make bumper stickers?
That’s where I got it. Wish I could find one for my van.
Sorry about the distance from N. That’s just a hole that can’t be filled.
I know. I remember talking with you about it and you offering to give her a call and shape her up, too. Retrospect. Not sure why I feel compelled to dump here on occasion, probably just an extension of my inclination to do it to people in person.
Ah, don’t think I’m not haunted that I didn’t follow through and call her. Whole thing sucks. Actually I think the term is ‘Sucks BIG TIME’.
Lookee here!
Although 7 bucks is a lot for a bumpersticker, these are great.
Excellent! I’m going to need one of those.
We could probably still do it, though, quick turnaround and we’ve got a long way to go…
What a wonderful way to give advice…in a backdoor, non-judgmental way. I certainly would have answered my grandmother in Italian, would have gone to medical school (not to make money, but to provide aid in other countries), would have kept at those music lessons (it’s a lot harder at my age!)
But I also would have listened more to people like the other commenters here.
I would have worn the too expensive dress I splurged on instead of letting it hang in my closet for years because it was too good to wear. Go figure.
Funny, isn’t it, how we tend to buy things that we think are really nice then are afraid to use them.
I should have gone to an academic college instead of a bullshit art school. I should not have given up music completely. I should not have taken a job in IT. When I quit my job I never should have accepted the offer to take it back again. I never should have quit smoking.
You should not have promoted pestilence laden rodents as models of cuteness.
never made any myself…..although there was that gaffe when l apprenticed w/ Dr. Kevorkian…rest assured tho chris, the subjects didn’t suffer, in keeping w/ the Kevorkiskool coda: suicide is painless
who knows….maybe the good Dr. will called in to do a dbl at the executive branch any day now…
lTMF’sA
I’m not sure I would have done anything different. I’m not smart enough. Besides, everything I’ve ever done has turned me into the well-adjusted, fully-functional, down-to-earth raving lunatic you see before you.
Although if I knew then what I know now, I might have gone to a different college. But that’s another story.
Actually, scratch that. If I’d have known then what I know now I would have bought Apple and Microsoft when they first went on the market. I would like to think I could have gone to work for Microsoft back when it was the gravy train, but I’m not sure I’d have been smart enough for that either.
Oh yeah . . . and I would have bought a better banjo and played it instead of keeping it in storage for about 20 years.
Actually come to think of it I shouldn’t have dropped the violin when I was 10 in favor of being a crossing guard (crossing guards were the cool kids, you see, and I couldn’t do both because of time commitments). I could have been fiddling in an Irish band all this time instead of workin’ for Da Man. But then there’s that smarts thing again . . .
I would look for parent with better genetic material so I could be at least 5’8″.
that had editable comments so I could make parent parents.
Hey, one 6-foot parent is all it would take, right?
It’s all it took for me. 🙂
Unfortunately, I got 5’2″ and 5’8″ and a long line of short peasants (“mazel tov! another short one — less to feed”).
I think FMom is 5’8″ and Fdad was 6′. My grandparents weren’t that tall though. I think it must have been the well water.
As hard as it was working full time and going to college, I would have finished college.
I also would have bought that winning 200 million dollar lottery ticket.
How could I have left not winning the lottery off my list? 🙂
I don’t know, that way high up there.
Better birth control 🙂
Gotten married and had kids later in life
Been much more present with my kids when they were younger
Did the Ph.d come hell or high water
That PhD one hits close to home…it gets hard to do that with kids around, doesn’t it?
I would have never stopped using my Canon AE-1.
I would have consistently kept a journal.
I would have started scouting around for a new job a couple of years ago.
Do you still have your AE-1? I know you have one of the cutest models ever running around your house…just sayin’.
I just got the camera fixed and it is loaded with B/W film. The cats will make great models, won’t they;)
You should never stop using any camera. But one that had a direct link to the internet would be good. Then we could make the intertubes the andrewtubes.
That’s clearly a sad cry for a fix. I’ll see what I can do.
See that’s why I shouldn’t fix all my mistakes — where would be if I did something about being unsubtle crybaby? 😉
He looks a little tired, I took this just after dinner and just before bath time.
I hope this isn’t too big.
I can’t believe how much he’s grown Toni. He’ll be grown before you know it.
Stop that! Just you stop that – or I’ll be regretting the lost years!
but he sure is getting to be a big boy. (boo-hoo)
We are thinking about a road trip to an Ohio zoo this summer. I’ll e-mail you later.
There’s also a really good aquarium across the river (just on the other side of downtown Cincy) in Newport, Ky.
He looks wonderful!
Has it really been almost 2 years since he came? It seems like last week.
I would have taken a camera to Europe when I went there for a month!!!! I didn’t want to carry it around and I was not ‘into’ taking pictures at the time. Now, I’d give anything to have momentos from that trip.
I was smarter the second time.
I’ve made that I “don’t feel like carrying my camera around” mistake too.
That’s one lesson I learned a long time ago, thank the FSM. And thanks to those clever folks who invented the small digital cameras that are so easy to carry everywhere.
Tough question, CG. My mistakes are so legion — and present themselves to me, now one, now another, so vividly in dark hours — that any time I really try to sort through them all I come to the depressing conclusion that things started to go awry when sperm met egg.
However, one “learning experience” really does stand out. I think it’s a good story.
It was a couple of years after I graduated from a prestigious college with a major in (inter alia) music, with a focus on jazz. Supporting myself with low-level retail jobs and working on my music. The local community college had a course, Beginning Jazz Arranging, whose teacher was highly recommended. I enrolled in the course with high expectations.
The first day of the class, the teacher came in and announced, “Before we go any further, I want to see who belongs here and who doesn’t. Take out a sheet of manuscript paper, or just draw the five lines on a sheet of notebook paper. I’m going to write a simple melody on the blackboard. Harmonize it in four-way close.”
He wrote the melody. I was petrified. My four semesters of (classical) music theory notwithstanding, I had no idea what four-way close was. “Oh God,” I thought. “I’m going to get kicked out of the course.” Thinking frantically, I concluded, “OK, ‘four-way’ must mean there are four notes under the melody note, and ‘close’ must mean they’re bunched up together … or something like that …” And I busied myself, as the other students did, scribbling down notes.
The teacher then said, “That’s enough time. Before you hand these in, do any of you have any questions?”
One hardy soul raised her hand. “Ummm … What’s four-way close?”
Silence fell over the room. He looked at her. Then he ran his eyes over the rest of us.
“That,” the teacher said, “is the question all of you should be asking. This is a course in beginning jazz arranging! If you knew what four-way close was, you would have no business being here!”
BAM! Was that a revelation!
I should be embarrassed to admit it, but I’m not. All those years in K-12, then college, gathering A’s from class to class like a hummingbird flitting from flower to flower, and it had never sunk in …
You’re not here to show what you know. You’re here to learn what you don’t know.
And though I have no religious beliefs in “this” world’s being a preparation for another one, or in reincarnation, etc., I’ve taken the lesson I learned too late about the whole point of taking a class and generalized it to life.
I’m not here to show what I know. I’m here to learn what I don’t know.
Fortunately … and not to wax Socratic … there’s plenty in the latter category, in my case, to fill lots of lifetimes, let alone one.
How was the rest of that class? It sounds like the first class taught you the biggest lesson. (and like the teacher was a little bit sadistic, scaring you all like that…)
The class was great; he was a really superb teacher. Alas, it was ages ago, and I never made much use of the substance of the course, so that today, I once again couldn’t tell you what four-way close is. What I wouldn’t do is pretend to know! Yup, that first class gave the most lasting lesson of them all.
Sadistic? Maybe. I don’t think so. It was a brilliant strategy, calculated to produce a much-needed jolt — and only such a jolt, I’m convinced, would’ve had the desired effect. He exploited our fear, briefly, in order to eliminate it. That worked a lot better than the usual nicey-nice encouragement to ask questions, or the standard reassurance that “there are no stupid questions” (which students know better than to believe anyway).
Besides, think about how good that one woman must have felt!
Now, if you want to get to truly sadistic teachers … I could tell you some stories …
In the afternoon on Feb 9, 2004 I got dizzy and sweaty and had to sit down for about 20 minutes until I felt OK again.
On Feb 11, 2004 I had a fatal heart attack from which I was resuscitated after the EMS crew arrived 11 minutes after I first called and then croaked.
I kind of wish I’d been a bit more on the ball on the 9th.
You win. 🙂
Glad you’re with us. Do you have any profound messages from the other side?
Thank you SN. Yes! I do feel like I’ve ‘won’, that I’ve learned some very valuable things. I am suffused with gratitude in my life now in a way I never was before, and I don’t take things for granted the way I used to.
As for insights or messages possibly inspired by my “walks on the wild side”, (my visits to the “other” side, [4 of them in all before the 3 month hospital deal was done), the only message I have is really the old saw; “Wherever we go, there we are”. I had some great and strong hallucinations that I remember as more real than actual reality, but aside from that, no glimpses of activity beyond the veil.
I’m glad you’re still around to have had the chance to learn from that.
Thank you CG. I too am very glad to be here, and with my much intensified gratitude and appreciation for my fellow man, I seem to be getting a lot more out of life, despite the tricky parts.
I’d have learned a LOT earlier that “learning from mistakes” is a workable approach.
I’d also have not let my old man convince me that MAKING mistakes was so unacceptable that doing nothing at all was actually preferable.
Probably most important, though… I’d have learned that other people’s opinions of me are simply not important in the grand scheme.
(Oh… and I’d have learned not to dwell on past mistakes. <G>)
Experience can be such a good teacher.
I am trying to learn to let my teenager learn from his mistakes, while he’s still in a controlled environment…but it’s not always easy to fight off the temptation to want to fix everything for him, even when he’s capable of fixing some of these things himself.
I bought the curved shaft as well – the outcome was a curved spine. I have found that the best thing to do is let other people make the same mistakes that you made – nobody likes a guy who tries to tell them what they should or shouldn’t do – even if it is in their best interest. Have you ever noticed that really wise people will listen to your hair-brained ideas and never say that you shouldn’t act on them knowing full well that you are headed for disaster? Instead, they ask questions that subtly plant seeds that should help you make a better decision than the one that you have already convinced yourself on choosing. Bad decisions are what make us better decision makers.
My favorite definition of an expert is “someone who’s already made lots of mistakes and learned from them”.
Bummer about the curved shaft and spine.