almost a second chance

I spent 20 minutes trying to find the right music to play while I wrote this. It ended up being Hey Mercedes.

I am not one to have a large backpack full of regrets, more like a wallet, a little kid wallet. I remember when I got my first wallet, it was a shitty red nylon one, and it had some change, a dollar or two, a picture of my parents and something with my address on it. Stupid little thing. Anyways, my "regret wallet" is mostly empty. I put events/people/places into it occasionally, and after a few years/months/days/minutes I take them out, realizing I am happy where I am now, and I wouldn't be here with/without that thing.

I do regret not buying the last Jawbreaker album when I found out about them in junior high and they were still together, but I probably would have sold it back at some point to buy a korn record, so I am actually ok with it. Besides, who would have wanted to be that cool in junior high? (HA!)

The main regret tormentor has always been my involvement with the fairer sex. Not the ones I actually stumbled into some sort of relationship but the ones I didn't. And not the ones I didn't because they saw behind the curtain or I wasn't boxing my weight, but the ones who because of circumstances it was impossible.

I had a girlfriend. They had a boyfriend. They lived in another state/country. They were married. I didn't know there name. I was moving away. They were moving home.

It's not even really a regret, actually. It's a what-if? What if any of those mitigating factors were gone and something could have happened, even for a night?

Most of these girls are very long gone and forgotten, thrown out with the boxes of pictures/address books/childhood memorabilia I have left at the dump during one of my many moves. Names and faces blur together. Did I meet them in a store, or under a tree, or at a friends apartment, or never at all?

Those chances never present themselves again.

Except this time.

I might have a second chance at a first shot.