We’ll get right to it: you want to know our greatest regrets — the things we are most ashamed of — it’s all right here! (Okay, and Christopher, at Shawn’s request, talks about the time he found his father in the basement doing surgery on himself.
Seriously!
Ralph Bertil Gronlund may have been a man wrought with regrets, but he did shit his own way…
* * *
We kick it off by talking all about the first time we became aware there was this thing in the world called regret. After that, we define regret…and chat about whether or not it’s possible to live a life without regrets.
Want to know what we regret in life? We talk about that shit…and then we discuss people [not by name — we’re not assholes] we know who are torn apart with regrets to the point that life is hard for them. (And, sadly, a lot of people are like, “Get over it!” to them. Ah, were it that easy for those people…)
Sticking to that, we chat about why some people have a tougher time with regrets, while people like us are like, “Ah well, there was a time in the past when we were stupid…and even did horrible things…”
We step back to the “Get over it!” advice, talking about whether or not that’s a realistic bit of advice when dealing with people who carry regret. (By now, it’s probably clear that we are not heartless bastards and feel for those around us.)
We love technology on this show, so…we devote time to how technology affects people’s regrets…as well as how simply being an American (and what we “stand for”) can play into regrets.
If we had a time machine, find out the one thing we’d go back to in our own lives and change. But let’s be honest: the present is where it’s at. We talk about if there’s anything we’re doing right now that we might one day regret — and what we can do today to prevent that from ever happening.
And while we were scheduled to talk about what advice we’d give to a person torn up by regrets, we had such a great time with this episode that Shawn thought Christopher was setting him up for our end catch phrase. But it’s probably fair to say we’d each have said something like, “Get professional help, and realize we all make mistakes. Find a way to love yourself and see your good, no matter what terrible things you did in your past. They’re probably not as bad as you imagine them to be.” (Seriously, Christopher really did something shitty to a kid in his neighborhood, but the past is the past…)
And don’t regret not sharing your greatest regrets in the comments.
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I’ve regretted not knowing “pho” from “fu.” But I’m over it.
I think unless you grow up speaking the language or have close friends who do, you initially say “Pho,” instead of “Fuh.”
Hell, I had friends from Vietnam when I was a kid and didn’t know how it’s pronounced until a few years ago.
But that Milkboy thing… Dammit, why, Christopher why?!?
1. Milkboy
2. Oregano Boy
3. Mole Boy
Damn, Chris.
Yeah, I was a shitty person in some ways. But a FRIENDLY and KIND shitty person 😉
(I THINK I’ve mentioned the Penthouse Forum letter that got a kid dragged out of our school by a cop, right? I didn’t mention that one for YEARS…even to my closest friends. Hell, I think it was only after that guy killed himself that I ever mentioned it.)
I’m nice now! 🙂
I’ve not yet heard about
4. Penthouse boy.
There was a guy who was sexually harassing this girl. Yes, she was one of the people who picked on me, but that was still not cool. He’d call her at night and say crude things, leave her suggestive letters…things like that. It was so bad that the police were brought in.
The guy was an ass. Even our crew of misfits didn’t like him, and we accepted anyone for a semblance of safety. He kept telling us what he was going to do to this girl, and the idea hit. The cops gave him a chance, but he was to not further bother this girl. He had access to the “computer lab,” back when the computer lab was an Apple IIe and a dot matrix printer. So…I wrote a letter from the guy’s point of view to the girl, and I used a letter from the Penthouse Forum as the basis. (Not that a good kid like me would have ever had a hidden magazine in his bedroom back in the 80s 😉 ) I went into the computer lab (I did not have access), and wrote the letter from him to her and printed it. Folded it up, and dropped it in her locker.
Cops came and dragged the kid off. Sure, not for good, but as they removed him from school, he swore up and down that it wasn’t him…and it wasn’t. I didn’t even tell my closest friends — I kept it to myself for decades.
He did stop bothering the girl, and I learned that day how the criminal justice system could be skewed by an 8th grader with technology.
If you’re curious how the story of the guy ends: one morning he was at a train station — and when a through-train blew by, he stepped in front of it on purpose. He was apparently about to go down for child molestation and decided suicide was the better option.
(He is also one of two people I’ve ever hit my hardest. In the stomach. My dad told me once that if a fat guy ever comes at you, hit him in the stomach. He came at me in the wrestling locker room my freshman year, and I dropped him so hard that I thought I ruptured his spleen.)
I think you now know all of the worst things I’ve ever done…
OMG and wow…
That’s quite a story. A dark one for your “based on true events” collection.