Regrets

Life is funny.  When you're a kid, you don't think about the future much.  Adulthood seems like a foreign concept, and so far off, that it's not worth consideration.  Even our teen years, when we start to prepare to be an adult, and try to act like one, the thought of actually being one seems far off.  I'm not sure when it happens, but at some undetermined point, out of nowhere, we're grown ups.  I can remember graduating high school, and going to college.  I still didn't feel like an adult, (and if you had been in Lexington with me at that time you'd have seen I didn't act like one either).  Then, after coming back home, out of the blue, I found myself married, with a baby boy, and bills, and a job, and realized "Wow!  I'm a damn grownup".  Now, I'm on marriage #2, and have child #2, and more bills, and I'm over 30.  My God, how did that happen?  Now, instead of worrying about homework, and new clothes, and video games, I've got to worry about car payments, and prostate exams, and sick kids.  I hate to say it, but now I know how my parents felt, and what they meant all those times they gave me lectures.  That's a scary thought.  Being a grownup isn't always fun.  Working sucks, my hair is thinning, it's much harder to stay in shape, and I don't want to pay car insurance.   That's the funny part.  As a kid, I never thought about the future, or the past, only the moment I was in.  Now, I look back at the past, using it as a reference to guide me in the future.  I don't have any regrets, or at least any that matter now.  We all would have done a few things differently, but the things that we did got us to where we are today.  I regret laughing at Eric Cline so much through school.  I regret not asking Beth Brooks to dance at our 8th grade dance.  I regret not playing basketball in high school.  I regret my "less studying, more beer pong" strategy at UK.  We all have a few regrets, but I'm alive, I love my wife and children very much, and I have so much more than a lot of people have.  So, as I move gracefully (I can wish) through my 30's and into my 40's and beyond, I'll continue to make new memories that I can look back on when I'm old, (providing I can remember them).  Hopefully, they'll mostly be happy ones, although I'm sure I'll add a few new regrets too.  I have a feeling that, if I'm still around, I'll be even more bald, with even more bills, and more aches and pains, but I'm just as sure, with the people I consider important around me, I'll be perfectly content.  Life's funny that way.