“Yeah, yeah, it came in the shape of a bottle? We’re from the Kingsman tailor shop in London. Maybe you’ve heard of us.” – Kingsman, The Golden Circle
During COVID they said I needed to wear a mask and gloves to go shopping. They lied. Apparently I needed clothes, too.
There was a time in my life when I had to make a choice. It was a dark time for me. Let me give some background. Please, everyone pretend that there’s a swirling motion and fuzzy stuff as we go back in time . . . to a land before cell phones and Google®.
In my first semester at college, I did pretty well. I studied for a few hours and got a 3.4 at a college that had the reputation as being the toughest one in the state. Life was good. I believe that I spent more time with Coors Light™ that semester than I spent studying calc, physics, or chemistry.
My second semester wasn’t the same.
In my first three tests (within the first two weeks of the semester) I got three Fs. These were the first three Fs I had ever gotten in my life on tests.
Ever.
They asked me to describe failure in two words. I replied, “I can’t.”
They weren’t horrible Fs, but the percentages were all in the 50s, except for physics 2 which was in the 40s. To be fair, the average score for the physics 2 test for all students was in the 50s – physics 2 was a designated “weed out” course.
Right before spring break, I had midterms. I didn’t know the scores that I had gotten on the next tests, but spring break was not fun. I had a full ride scholarship, and it required that I keep my grades above a certain GPA for both semester and cumulative to keep the scholarship.
Yikes. Do you mean there are consequences for my actions?
For the first time in my life, I was looking real failure in the face. It was the long, dark, Kobayashi Maru of the soul.
I got 8 out of 10 on my driver’s test. Two jumped out of the way.
I sat on the hood of my car at the end of spring break for a few hours at an Interstate rest stop under the gentle spring Sun, still hours away from the school. I figured I had two options:
- Go back to school and tough it out. Nine more weeks of hell, and no promise that I’d do any better than I had done in the first nine, but if I did, it would mean studying harder than I ever had studied anything, except those times I studied the rare illicit Playboy® that came into my hands.
- Drive north. It was before there was much of a border, and I could just drive into Canada, get a knit hat. I already knew the language, I could say “aboot” and “take off, eh” as well as anyone. I had a Visa® with a $500 limit, and a car that was owned free and clear, I had half a can of Copenhagen®, and I was wearing sunglasses. I could drive to Saskatchewan and become a lumberjack. Yes, this was my backup plan, even though I’m not sure Saskatchewan even has trees.
After a long time thinking, I . . .
There are several strategies in life, just like there are several strategies in a supermarket. Oh, sure, I could shop like everyone normally does here in Modern Mayberry and cover my nipples in yogurt while I’m in the dairy aisle (because nipple yogurt is free here), but I’m not talking about the shopping part, I’m talking about checking out.
The first option is to pick a line and stick with it, even if the lady in front of me has 43,238 coupons and price matches every item on the sale flyer from the competing grocery store and ends up getting $983,365.55 worth of groceries for $1.98 plus a raincheck for sour cream. For the nipples, you know, if you’re allergic to the yogurt.
What’s the most important culture in the world? Agriculture.
Okay, that’s not a great option, because every other line in the grocery store will cycle 43 times while the lady does one checkout and the clerk silently fantasizes about going home for a few gallons of gin.
Option 2 is a different one. In this one, I could flit from line to line like a politician being:
- against gay marriage during election season
- to being for gay marriage in special circumstances when election is comfortably far away
- to being silent before election season
- to sponsoring mandatory hormone treatment for toddlers because toddlers can’t consent to choosing their gender.
Yeah. While that might get a politician lots of money and votes, it just gets me moving from a stopped line to a moving line that stops as soon as I get in it and I don’t even get appointed as an ambassador to the Swedish Bikini Team.
I sold my Swiss watches to a friend in Mexico. Adios, Omegas!
Option 3, however, is probably the sanest one. Look around for the best line. If the coupon lady gets in, or there’s a price check, or the clerk is obviously on some sort of depressant medication because they’re not at home drinking a few gallons of gin, move to the next best line.
In my career, I jumped lines a couple of times. My first job was into an industry that was in the middle of a slump in the region I lived. So, I jumped. In this case, I jumped to an entirely different industry, and had a pretty good career. When that industry slumped, I jumped again, and then jumped back.
All of the jobs were basically related, except if you looked at them from the inside – they were all different. The combination of those experiences led me to a career that turned out to be a pretty good one, though there is the possibility that if I had jumped one fewer time, it would have been even more lucrative.
Or not. I might have ended up as a clerk who was missing their evening gin. I’m not going to worry that I might have done better if I had or hadn’t jumped a line, because life is far too short for that type of regret.
Also?
I’m going to try to not let the choices I’ve made in the past make me too timid. As many of the readers here, there are likely more years behind me than ahead, and it’s far too early to stop trying to kick a dent in the Universe, which in itself requires risk. I may win, I may lose, but I’m still in the game.
Looking back, I’m fairly happy with the progression that developed from my choices. And it’s because I stayed in line at the first opportunity to jump: college.
I made a paper airplane that wouldn’t move. I guess the problem was that I used stationary.
Back to that Interstate rest stop, far away in time and space . . . . (imagine the swirly thing again)
After a long time thinking sitting on the hood of my car on that warm spring day so many days ago, I decided that I could pack up my stuff and go up to Saskatchewan any time to be a lumberjack, even at the end of the semester if things didn’t work out. I could also take the time to learn if there were trees there or if I would have to fight the beavers for maple syrup so I could be strong when the wolves come.
But I only had one shot to try to see if I could dig myself out of the hole that I had made for myself.
I did. I got two Cs and a D – the best-looking D (and still the only D) that I’ve ever had in my life. My scholarship was safe. The semester after that one was okay, and then every semester after that I got great grades. I had learned that I could come back from failure, and though I changed lines later a time or two, I decided to see if this line would move for me because I was only risking failure, and only risking nine more weeks of my life. The line moved.
In life, pick your line. Move when you need to. And realize that the choice is yours.
I happened to be president of the square root club at that same college the same semester you are talking about. I lost the scholarship, so school became very expensive after that. But wow my gpa climbed after the Dean gave me probationary status :). Glad i stuck it out as well. Now which lane should I choose for my next decision…..
Hint: Get out of cities.
It is a lot easier to wallow in regret and could have been’s than it is to take stock of where you are and decide what you are going to do with the time you have left.
It is. But it’s way more fun to push and risk.
Glad you made the choice that you did.
Too many people today would blame someone else for their situation and then blame them too for not fixing it for them.
Thankfully, I knew who took those tests without studying.
Egad! Same experience, but it was Calculus 3 and Physics 1 (made an A in HS Physics). Switched to Finance from engineering. MBA ensued. 50 years later, some regrets, but they’re minor.
Pretty much achieved what I wanted in life. If you don’t experience some hard times, you’re never going to develop character.
Yes – the whole thing left me better off, and with a better work ethic.
I’m married to one who chooses Option2. He is severely ADHD, which has influenced his behavior. He has managed to carve out a career with some successes, although with many regrets for the paths not taken.
Gotta avoid the regrets – as the man said, you are where you is.
If I could take a time machine back to my college days, I would scrape together $800, travel cross-country to find Ronald Wayne in the first week of April 1976, and buy a single sheet of typewritten paper he chose to sell in what most would say was an unwise decision.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2388674/The-unluckiest-man-world-Meet-Ron-Wayne-Apple-Incs-forgotten-founder.html
https://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/46-years-ago-this-forgotten-apple-co-founder-left-an-estimated-75-billion-on-table.html
Instead, only a few years later I made an unwise decision of my own and chose to marry the wrong person for me even though I knew deep in my gut I was making a mistake at the time. Experience is what provides the wisdom to guide good decisions. In my case, experience led me to eventually to initiate a divorce, which is roughly equivalent to entering Dante’s Seven Circles of Hell. Best choice I ever made. I only regret that it had to hurt so many people and leave such scars upon us all. I reflect on all that far too often while sitting on an imaginary car hood in my mind.
Only $75 billion, eh? On a fruit company, too!
The life struggle that far too many people seem to not try hard enough with before jumping lanes is marriage, so often ending in divorce. What, are newlyweds really so stupid as to suppose that things are going to be peaches and cream always and forever? No effort required?
More than half of all marriages end in divorce, and women are eager to point out that they initiate 70% of those. Boasting about a statistic like that is akin to failing the physics exam and then blaming Isaac Newton for not holding up his end in your relationship with the laws of motion. (“You’ll never move me naked again, Isaac.”) Equal and opposite, indeed.
My Interstate rest stop moments have been many and varied, but something deep in my soul simply will not allow me to quit anything, be it a college major I grew disillusioned with (limped through to finish a B.S. in Chemistry before switching to E.E. despite discovering in sophomore year that I, um, really don’t like Chemistry) or finding that a sweet, fun, quirky GF can morph almost overnight into a needy, demanding crybaby in pregnancy.
Good on yer for not throwing in the towel as a frosh hitting the academic wall (“Go to the library again? Didn’t we just study last week?”) I am very curious, though, how such a seemingly genial, cheerful fellow as you, JW, came to conclude that your first marriage was a non-starter. You mention your ex so often in these posts that I am surprised she did not make an appearance in this one in the context of choosing (un)wisely.
I actually rarely talk about her except to make obviously outrageous jokes that aren’t true. The character part I took away from that marriage is that I don’t lie, and hold myself to truth as one of my highest values. The particular details of our divorce are probably less important than what I learned from it, which is never to date anyone with glowing red eyes.
College WAS…when I went Engineering wise technical classes were taught by people who could. Now they follow the creed of:
Those that can do, those that can’t teach, and those that can’t teach, work for the government.
Future prospects. The military is doing everything possible to eliminate people of faith and all normies, guess so they can kill the people they hate here. That is a old reliable eliminated along with college.
When the dollar is DONE and we need to make our own stuff again. Welders, Machinists, etc are going to be the right choices.
College is rapidly breaking down at every level. Dark times ahead.
That right there is the story of my adult life … except for the yogurt.
Well, that’s what the sour cream was for, right?
What, are you a butter man?
Sweet lessons, Ty
Thank you!!!
Good post. Provoked some thoughts that usually go neglected.
I’m sometimes tempted to regret past life choices. For example, after 48 years of marriage, I’d have to say, objectively, that I didn’t make the best choice. But if I muse on alternative paths, that’s like telling God that I can create a different (and better) reality from the one He gave me, which really is a species of blasphemy. And, as incomplete as my marital bliss may be, it’s also not all that bad and could be a helluva lot worse; and any alternative would also involve a couple of offspring not to exist, who now do, and that’s not to be thought of. No, in my final chapter or so, my business is to learn to be content in whatever circumstance I find myself, as the apostle Paul said in his letter to the Philippians.
Besides, how often does a 20-year-old manchild, full of testosterone and ignorance, make the “best” choice? I could’ve done much worse. And I’m thankful that I didn’t.
Yup. As an old friend said, Youth is wasted on the young.
Got a D in algebra. My gpa was mid-threes, so the guidance counselor said if you want, take it again and whichever is the highest grade, we’ll keep.
Made it sound like I was getting something for free so of course I agreed immediately.
Took it again, same teacher, did about the same. Could hang with the diff equations, made a sorta sense, but when it came to memorizing theorems for geometric application and whatnot, no not going there, pore noggin’s already jammed with espanol jibber-jabbery.
Mercy was granted, probly for showing up every day, and I got a C or C- if I recall.
Still not sure what all this has to do with PEZ. But I will cogitate on it.
Heh! Yeah, differential equations was the one where I went, “Why are we doing this????”
Evidently, when G*d wants your attention, He’ll get it. He got mine, and I had to stop being successful at physical things, and start being smarter. Tried college, thought it was rubbish, left, and got a bit smarter at life. That degree in hard knocks takes longer, or less time, depending on how stubborn you are. Biggest lesson I learned involved not wasting time on people and things that did you no good. Almost wound up on the ash heap, but the Grace of G*d prevented that.
Amen! He regularly slaps a fish across my face, because he knows I don’t do subtle messages.
Gratitude towards God is an excellent policy and will take you a very, very long way.
“I had a Visa® with a $500 limit, and a car that was owned free and clear, I had half a can of Copenhagen®,it was dark, and I was wearing sunglasses.”
Congrats. 80%. B-.
Joliet Jake and his silent brother Elwood tip their hats.
I know, I know, but it was like 2:30. Really a nice day. Mid 60s.
John – – An astute fellow (Mike N. Canada) described your decision that came while sitting at the truck stop upon the hood of your car:
Choices will be made, one at a time, by the individuals that face them, in those horrifying moments that separate who they are from whom they are about to become.
Just a great phrase. I need to steel that one.
Because you never metal phrase you didn’t like?
Pretty brassy of you.
The irony of it is aluminum on the horizon.
But I zinc I must stop, before some copper fills me full of lead, for failing to cesium and desist.
I wouldn’t want to be a boron your blog, but dropping such silver-tongued efforts on you is comedy gold.
I’m sure you arsenickering about these, even though most people can’t stand that they’re sodium only an Indium chief or someone from Germanium would tolerate them. If only I had a nickel for every time I heard that. In my defense, it was tin someone put you in your place with efforts that were 5¢ a gallium, with something so elemental.
Hahahahhahaaha! See what I get for answering these late at night! Excellent! I guess my typing was a bit leaden, but after that, I need some helium time.