Regrets

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other.

Those first lines of Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken best exemplify my thoughts on “Regrets”. There is no use in having any. They are acts in futility . I do not think of things in that way. By this time in my life I have looked down thousands of roads, and then taken others. Many of them would have lead me into alternate life histories that I would not recognize now. Some might have been better, and others would most likely been worse. I can’t say. I’m only certain that they would have been different. Some of those forks in the road were merely narrow paths; some were super highways.

In the late spring of 1964, I was living in Bloomington Indiana attending Indiana University. I had been in school for about seven years by then. My brother had graduated, married and moved on. Most of the friends I’d made during those years had followed the same road. I wondered why I was still there.

One late morning I was walking along Kirkwood Street toward the campus when I heard a knocking on the store window to my right. Two voluptuous coeds in bikini swimming suits were sitting in the window beckoning to me. I had seen them several times, and figured the store had hired them as live models to entice customers. I felt a bit of consternation as I went in to see what they could possibly want of me.

They smiled coyly, and explained that because of the hot day they were uncomfortable and would I please buy a couple poor girls a cone from the ice cream shop next door. Now, a smoother mover than I might have considered this a golden opportunity.   Unfortunately, I had just stopped by a gas station on the way to campus, and spent my last two dollars on gas. I was broke and lacked the experience, creativity, or finesse to take advantage of the opportunity.

In embarrassment I mumbled a response that was not all that nice. It was not so terrible, just an insinuation that they should pay for their own damn ice cream cones. The girls had been expecting a little fun, some banter, and were surprised by my unfriendly rejoinder. They excused me and I left - feeling a bit of a jerk.

Later I thought of all the smart lines I could have laid on them. “ I can see that you ladies obviously don’t have much on you - money that is - but I by chance have left my wallet at home. If you could see your way clear to loan me a couple dollars I’d happily buy cones and pay you back tomorrow”.

Or, I could have been the honest supplicant bemoaning fate. How I had elected to spend my last two dollars on gas in order to get there, but if I had chosen otherwise I probably would have run out of gas and not had the pleasure of making their acquaintance. It was a road I didn’t take - more of a narrow path, but some narrow paths run into major highways.

A couple years later I was in Chicago interviewing for a permanent job through an employment agency. One place they sent me was in an industrial part of town. I went into an older building and entered an old office. It might have dated back to the 1920’s or even earlier, with hardwood floors, worn and polished with time, and furniture from the same era. It was like entering a time-warp.

The place was clean and tidy. Two middle aged women sat at old desks behind fenced off railings. The main office sat across the room behind glass windows. They ushered me into see the boss, an old man in a double breasted suit with a matching vest - more time-warp. We sat and talked for quite a while. He ran an oil business, and wanted a young man to train to eventually take over. That is about all I remember about the job. What stuck me and called me back through the years was the friendliness of the three. It was a welcoming and comfortable place, and the old man probably had a lot to teach me. He offered me a job right there and then. I told him I had to think about but knew as I left that I wanted something flashier. I took another offer with a company that sold science equipment the next week and went down that road for a short while, but I always wondered where the other road would have taken me.

I started with a poem so it seems fitting to finish with this one by Omar Khayyam

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.