The preacher’s query caught my divided attention: “What would you do if you knew then what you know now?”
It’s been asked before, most notably in the 1986 slapstick tearj erker, “Peggy Sue Got Married,” and a major motion picture about going back in time every other year since then.
While listening to the sermon, I pondered the proposition: Knowing what I know now (which isn’t much, according to the results of my online IQ test), what would I do differently? What have I learned in middle age? What do I regret? How would I change my life or behavior? Why am I sitting alone in an empty church? Did the service end?
That said, knowing what I know now, if I had to do it all over again, I would:
• Never comment on a woman’s pregnancy. NEVER. I don’t care how obvious it is. Pregnancy is not something you should ASSUME.
• Always make sure that my filter is activated in my mind before I speak.
Too often, something has gone straight from my senses to my mouth, bypassing my brain.
• Never own a credit card. You can reserve a hotel room with a debit card.
• Travel more before I started a career.
• Not eat that McRib.
• Take piano lessons as a child. My mother taught lessons at our home, but I was “too cool” to be interested. I could have learned the piano FOR FREE (another assumption).
• Not have wasted that halfhour watching “Sex in the City.”
I’ll never get that time back.
• Be more kind to my teachers.
• Not join the Columbia Record Club when I was nine years old.
Sure, it sounded great – seven albums for a penny. But that decision, through a chain of events, led to my ownership of “Barry Manilow Live!”
• Not eat a dozen doughnuts every morning when I was 18 years old.
At my first newspaper job, my boss (who also happened to be my uncle) would buy a dozen doughnuts every morning and dare me to eat them.
I would, much to his glee. That was the beginning point of the fatbuttery that plagues me today. The second time around, I would respectfully decline.
• Act on that idea I had about creating what’s now known as the Internet (I called it ‘Computerland.’)
• Change little about my career path.
As much as the newspaper industry is struggling now, being a “small-town” newspaper guy has provided a quality of life I wouldn’t trade for anything.
• Never trust anything I hear “on the street.” Or see on Facebook. Except from this newspaper.
• Always ask myself before saying something critical or opinionated: What is my intent?
If my intent is honestly anything selfish or not for someone else’s benefit, I shouldn’t say it. Basically, keep my big mouth shut.
• Conversely, I would also make sure to speak up when confronted with something I know to be stupid, wrong, corrupt, or shady.
On a number of occasions, I have kept my big mouth shut out of fear or cowardice, when I should have spoken up for something or someone.
The last couple of years has tested my resolve on this keenly.
• I would marry the same woman.
Maybe I should have saved that for Valentine’s Day.
• Len Robbins is the editor of The Clinch County News. He can be reached at lrobbins@clinchcounty news
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