Thursday Thirteen v.5

Thirteen Times I Needed a Delorian

...and some Plutonium. Times of regret - we all have them. So, let's get in the Delorian, crank it up to 85mph and take care of all of those "Biff" moments that would change my life for the better.

Here are 13 things I would go back in time and change.
Screw the space-time continum, I want to be happy now.

1. My wedding day. October 13, 1990. To stop it before it got out of hand. Mostly, I felt badly for the guests who gave up a perfectly good Saturday to attend and buy a gift, and I missed my 15-year high school reunion. She has been gone since 1996, but I did get a nice cat out of the deal, so it wasn't a total loss.

2. Buying those shoes. What was I thinking? They weren't going to fit any better at home than they did at the store. Is the air pressure different in shoe stores than it is at home, that makes my feet shrink? I have more shoes that I don't wear than ones that I do. A word of advice: Never buy shoes from a mail-order catalog.

3. Quitting the guitar. 1981. Playing was a lot of work, but satisfying. Once the fingertip calluses go, the playing suffers. Plus, I don't meet nearly as many women as I used to.

4. Giselle Geisele. 1989. I met her while I was dating #1. We talked about it, and agreed that I should stay with #1. I loved her name, and called her by it, even though she preferred "GG". I wonder where she is and I wonder if she wonders where I am? Google me, GG.

5. All those cases of sunburn. 1970s. Summers at the Jersey shore when all we had was Coppertone (SPF 0) that washed off two seconds after going in the water. Melanoma awaits.

6. Accepting that paper route. 1974. A ridiculous attempt to earn concert ticket money. It lasted a little more than a week for reasons that are too long to explain.

7. Buying the Pinto. 1976. Although I drove it for 8 years, it scared more people than the Bush Administration, but it never did explode or cause any real damage, unlike George.

8. The purple car. 1994. I read a story saying that purple was the next "hot color". Word of advice: Don't react to stories you read about how popular something is supposed to be - make your own decisions. The car is gone now. To understand the personal Hell I went through, read this.

9. The baseball cards. 1985-1990. Now, they are mostly worthless rectangles of cardboard that were entertaining at the time, but in my heart of hearts, I knew the money would be better spent drinking or getting a nice massage. They're gone, too.

10. Corning at $1 a share. 2002. They make all the LCDs for televisions and have been making quality glass products for longer than I have been alive. The stock got to a little more than a buck a share, and I had the savings account withdrawl slip filled out to buy a thousand shares, but couldn't pull the trigger. It's at $24.50 today. Spilled milk.

11. The Shore Property. 1978. I'm going back to the late 70s to buy a piece of property at the Jersey shore. It doesn't matter where, just buy it and sit on it until today. Then, sell it for a half-million dollars and retire - but not to the Jersey shore.

12. Paxil. 1999. Feeling kinda crappy, I decided to start taking this anti-depressant med. However, after wasting an entire summer yawning, laying around and generally not feeling too much better, I reasoned that the real problem was my relationship with my soon-to-be-ex girlfriend. LESSON: Never take pills because of someone else. Sometimes it's not you, it's them. And most of the time, a pill wouldn't fix them, either.

13. Dad. 1966. Dad died in April of 1967 at the age of 47 of arteriosclerosis (hardening of the arteries). All they could tell him then was to eat more fish. I'm going back with a surgeon from the Mayo Clinic and a fistful of catheters. Hey, nobody said "no passengers"!

Happy Thursday.