When are we old enough to feel regret for the first time, when we’re old enough to be able to decipher that it’s regret that we’re feeling, what it means, and why?
When I was around 5 or 6 years old, some friends and I were playing with matches. (Doesn’t every kid have a “playing with matches” story?) We lit a fire underneath our deck and almost burned my family’s house down. A few years later, I had a secret little party with a couple friends in our garage attic. We were young, so the menu consisted of chips and pop and the entertainment was KISS records. Such a festivity in the attic, with a large opening in the middle of the floor looking down to the concrete floor that was deemed fairly dangerous by my parents, was on the “don’t do” list, but I did it anyway. Eventually, a buddy fell through the hole, crashed to the floor, and got banged up pretty good.
A paragraph full of bad stuff, and I got in varying degrees of trouble when the feces hit the fan. Every single person on the planet has a paragraph like that. And in just about every instance, there’s a point where we’re told to say we’re sorry to whomever it is that has an apology coming, maybe there’s a discussion with the parents about why this negative thing happened, and maybe some form of punishment puts an end to the entire chapter.
But are we truly sorry, or are we just saying it because we know we have to? Or because we’re sorry we got caught but not necessarily for the actual misdeed, because that KISS party was sick, as the kids like to say today when something’s unreal good.
Do we regret any of it? Sure, maybe we wish we never did something, mostly because things turned sour and now we’re in trouble, but does it ever get deeper than that for a kid, where you actually feel genuine regret?
No, regret is reserved for adults. Maybe they regret things that go way back to their childhood, but it’s still a grown-up emotion.
I felt yet another tinge of regret the other day. It was yet another stellar weekend evening. Gorgeous weather, the kids were off doing their thing with their posse of pals, and one of my best friends and I were sitting in our living room, enjoying a lovely beverage and talking about, as we usually do, every single topic under the sun. With this friend, such conversations are never not accompanied by a soundtrack…music in the background. And, between the two of us, there’s no shortage of music to play. So we talk about music…concert experiences we’ve had in our past, experiences we’ve shared together, even a couple with our kids along, and musical experiences that we’ve decided we must soon partake in, with our kids in tow.
And then I wonder, how can I love music this much? How can I appreciate every little piano note I hear, or guitar chord, or even a simple tambourine jingle, and yet not know how to play a musical note on any instrument, much less read a single note? How is it that I’m always left to showing off my air guitar skills? And if it’s an old Elton John tune, my mad air piano skillz?
But, oh, the regret. Rewind to guitar lessons, as a kid. I decided I wanted to play guitar, then, early on in the sessions with my instructor, I decided either that it was much more difficult than I thought, or that I simply wasn’t very good, and never was going to be very good. So, never feeling that wave of passion that you read about in magazine articles, when the famous musician has that moment as a kid that “changed everything” and he spends just about every waking hour in his room, playing his instrument of choice, I kind of cashed it in. Not practicing enough, my lesson notes in the Mead notebook became a cursive “Sam Ting.” I asked my teacher what that meant. “Same thing,” he said. I needed to practice the same lesson yet again because I wasn’t putting in enough time to progress. When I faked a finger injury one week to mask yet another lack of devotion to daily practicing, it was apparent to my instructor and me that my guitar career was going to be a short one.
Ah, yes, my fingers. They’re short. I have small hands, just like Daunte Culpepper, and how’s his career going these days? So, when I periodically feel the tinges of regret over my lack of musical ability – especially when I sit on the couch like a worthless lump while my wife, who played the flute, helps the kids with their music lessons – I tell myself it’s probably best I gave up the guitar because my hands were too small to play all the chords.
That suffices, until I hear David Gilmour, Dave Navarro or some other guitar god shred through a solo, and I’m left to holding a phantom guitar and wiggling my fingers like some kind of village idiot.
We have new neighbors, and the teenage kid plays guitar in a band. Our youngest son thinks he’s unreal good, and wants him to teach him how to play. The other day, the neighbor said he’d be happy to.
This could be good, really good, even. After all, our kid isn’t even 9 yet, and his fingers are less than a half-inch shorter than his dad’s.
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When are we old enough to feel regret for the first time, when we’re old enough to be able to decipher that it’s regret that we’re feeling, what it means, and why?
When I was around 5 or 6 years old, some friends and I were playing with matches. (Doesn’t every kid have a “playing with matches” story?) We lit a fire underneath our deck and almost burned my family’s house down. A few years later, I had a secret little party with a couple friends in our garage attic. We were young, so the menu consisted of chips and pop and the entertainment was KISS records. Such a festivity in the attic, with a large opening in the middle of the floor looking down to the concrete floor that was deemed fairly dangerous by my parents, was on the “don’t do” list, but I did it anyway. Eventually, a buddy fell through the hole, crashed to the floor, and got banged up pretty good.
A paragraph full of bad stuff, and I got in varying degrees of trouble when the feces hit the fan. Every single person on the planet has a paragraph like that. And in just about every instance, there’s a point where we’re told to say we’re sorry to whomever it is that has an apology coming, maybe there’s a discussion with the parents about why this negative thing happened, and maybe some form of punishment puts an end to the entire chapter.
But are we truly sorry, or are we just saying it because we know we have to? Or because we’re sorry we got caught but not necessarily for the actual misdeed, because that KISS party was sick, as the kids like to say today when something’s unreal good.
Do we regret any of it? Sure, maybe we wish we never did something, mostly because things turned sour and now we’re in trouble, but does it ever get deeper than that for a kid, where you actually feel genuine regret?
No, regret is reserved for adults. Maybe they regret things that go way back to their childhood, but it’s still a grown-up emotion.
I felt yet another tinge of regret the other day. It was yet another stellar weekend evening. Gorgeous weather, the kids were off doing their thing with their posse of pals, and one of my best friends and I were sitting in our living room, enjoying a lovely beverage and talking about, as we usually do, every single topic under the sun. With this friend, such conversations are never not accompanied by a soundtrack…music in the background. And, between the two of us, there’s no shortage of music to play. So we talk about music…concert experiences we’ve had in our past, experiences we’ve shared together, even a couple with our kids along, and musical experiences that we’ve decided we must soon partake in, with our kids in tow.
And then I wonder, how can I love music this much? How can I appreciate every little piano note I hear, or guitar chord, or even a simple tambourine jingle, and yet not know how to play a musical note on any instrument, much less read a single note? How is it that I’m always left to showing off my air guitar skills? And if it’s an old Elton John tune, my mad air piano skillz?
But, oh, the regret. Rewind to guitar lessons, as a kid. I decided I wanted to play guitar, then, early on in the sessions with my instructor, I decided either that it was much more difficult than I thought, or that I simply wasn’t very good, and never was going to be very good. So, never feeling that wave of passion that you read about in magazine articles, when the famous musician has that moment as a kid that “changed everything” and he spends just about every waking hour in his room, playing his instrument of choice, I kind of cashed it in. Not practicing enough, my lesson notes in the Mead notebook became a cursive “Sam Ting.” I asked my teacher what that meant. “Same thing,” he said. I needed to practice the same lesson yet again because I wasn’t putting in enough time to progress. When I faked a finger injury one week to mask yet another lack of devotion to daily practicing, it was apparent to my instructor and me that my guitar career was going to be a short one.
Ah, yes, my fingers. They’re short. I have small hands, just like Daunte Culpepper, and how’s his career going these days? So, when I periodically feel the tinges of regret over my lack of musical ability – especially when I sit on the couch like a worthless lump while my wife, who played the flute, helps the kids with their music lessons – I tell myself it’s probably best I gave up the guitar because my hands were too small to play all the chords.
That suffices, until I hear David Gilmour, Dave Navarro or some other guitar god shred through a solo, and I’m left to holding a phantom guitar and wiggling my fingers like some kind of village idiot.
We have new neighbors, and the teenage kid plays guitar in a band. Our youngest son thinks he’s unreal good, and wants him to teach him how to play. The other day, the neighbor said he’d be happy to.
This could be good, really good, even. After all, our kid isn’t even 9 yet, and his fingers are less than a half-inch shorter than his dad’s.
