It's the kind of thing where you look back and ask yourself, "Why the hell did I do that?"
I believe some of the regrettable actions of my youth come with a cloak of inevitability. I think they were stupid, yes, but they at least contributed in some small way to shaping me. I also believe we all carry an imaginary satchel of misdeed tokens throughout our formative years, and if we don't spend them on one thing we'll eventually spend them on something else. It's our duty as curious adventurers to spend our misdeed tokens while we're still young - when the stakes are at their lowest - to avoid life-ruining disasters after we've outgrown our didn't-know-any-better armor.
So some of my stupid actions are "glad I got that out of my system" events. I know what I did was wrong, but it was at least a passable lapse in judgment or a low-grade near-miss. Had I changed my mind and saved my token that day, who knows what other possibly more regrettable act I would spend it on later? Better the devil you know than the devil you don't.
But some dumb things were just dumb. Some things were just me being an ass. And the most painful things always involve someone else. Not someone else as an accomplice, but someone else as a victim of my stupidity. I've done all kinds of things solo that I shouldn't have, but only the most egregious get the moniker of Fully Regrettable, i.e., I would not do that again. These are acts that are not part of youthful adventurousness and thus don't relieve me of any misdeed tokens.
But the severity level is much lower for hurting others. Rare, if ever, is the occasion where putting someone else in their place grants you fewer tokens, even for those who deserve it.
"What would I have done differently?" If the answer is anything other than, "Well...nothing, I guess.", you fucked up.
Yesterday I was helping my daughter practice parallel parking. "First, pull up next to the front car. Then cut the wheel as you back into the space..." and so on. A bit later, with her older brother in the car, I was recounting how well she did when a memory popped into my head from when I lived in the city and was extracting myself from a particularly tight parallel parking space.
It was late at night and my girlfriend and I were leaving her apartment to drive to my parent's house about 90 minutes away. I drove a somewhat battered 1995 Acura Integra. Frost white, except for the rusted spot on the dented fender I never got fixed. Manual transmission (of course), and a small car by today's standards. At some point that night, other parked cars had book-ended mine so the space to maneuver my way out was painfully limited. It's the amount of space that elicits a "really??" when you come back to your car to leave.
As we approached, I noticed another couple across the street, but couldn't tell if they were just arriving or about to leave. One was in the driver's seat of the car behind me while the other was at the entrance to one of the apartments. Now the pressure was on to negotiate this extraction with an audience. And not just a random audience of passersby, but that of strict scrutineers watching my performance with great interest, no doubt hoping I'm practiced enough to do the job without taking the paint off their front bumper. I could see there was less than a foot of space in front, but I did have enough room to back up a bit before doing about six or seven forward/reverse shuffles to get the rest of the way out. And this is where things went south.
I'd only barely started creeping back when the first car horn blast sounded. I stopped. Then continued. I knew how much space I had based on the assessment I made on my approach, and I was doing the spatial math as I backed up. Another inch, another horn. Trying to ignore this clearly deranged participant, I relented and pulled forward for the first time and predictably ran out of space almost immediately. The owner of the car in front of me was mercifully not present to join in the fun, so I didn't have to be quite as ginger pulling forward.
It's at this point I made a critical error in assuming our friend in the car behind, having witness me correctly and safely backing up once, would trust that I could do it again and perhaps refrain from adding her brutally distracting honks this time around. I also misjudged the number of times I would need to repeat this move to get out of the space, and as I backed up I could tell this would be the second and last time I would need to back up before I could clear the front car and drive away. And this detail, unbeknownst to anyone, was about to be used nefariously.
To my bewilderment, as I concentrated on backing up again, the horn honking commenced. Slowly, slowly, slowly I kept creeping back. Honk. Honnk. Honnnk. HONNNNNNNK until finally...bonk. It was gentle, but when the person you bonk is in the car, it doesn't matter. I pulled forward an inch so I wasn't still touching and then I did something I'd never done before. I got out of the car and started an argument with a stranger.
It was short. I shouted at her for honking at me, and she barked back with the justified retort, "Yeah, and you hit my car!", to which I shouted, "Yeah, well, I MEANT TO!". I sat back in the seat, shut the door, and drove away, hearing the other interested party shout, "Hey!", as I left. And for the record, I did mean to. I don't know if it was on the fifth or sixth honk, but at some point, my brain turned off and I became a dumb animal. The 90-minute inquiry on the way to my parent's house from my poor girlfriend was fully justified as there was no reason to do what I did.
It's the kind of thing where you look back and ask yourself, "Why the hell did I do that?"
So why the hell did I do that? And what would I have done differently? Let's start with the latter because that's pretty easy. I would have been kinder. I would have communicated. I would get out of the car before, not after I bumped hers. I would check the gap as I calmly approached her car, shoot her a smile, and start with, "Hi". I would apologize for scaring her by getting so close. I would reassure her I was doing my best not to hit her car, and ask if she or her boyfriend wouldn't mind spotting me just to be safe. But I didn't do that. I took her trepidation and plowed ahead (or backward, in this case). And I even confirmed her fear by doing the exact thing she was trying to prevent by honking. What a dick.
But why?
The four "I's" of the apocalypse, that's why: Impatience. Inflexibility. Immaturity. Insecurity.
In my mind, it was time to go. I had my plan and no new evidence would sway my conviction about pulling out of a space I knew I could negotiate. I hadn't grown up enough to understand that life didn't have to be a battle of wills where every other warm body is an opponent to be dominated. And I didn't have the kind of inner stability and balance necessary to quench my short fuse and put myself in someone else's shoes, even when doing so would dramatically improve the outcome.
I always try to bury these memories under the weight of any good deeds I've done, but regrets are like weeds. People say you shouldn't care what other people think about you, and to some extent, I believe that. But what about the people you only meet once while being the worst version of yourself? In all this time of trying to bury this particular memory, it never occurred to me to wonder if this couple ever thinks about that night as I do. "Hey honey, remember the time that asshole backed into your car on purpose?" I'm "that asshole" to someone.
No one is perfect, but there's a difference between mistakes and malevolence. Misdeed tokens aren't spent on malevolence. So the memory of that poor couple I terrorized in the parallel parking debauch serves as a reminder to always elevate my expectations of myself to raise my "floor". The worst version of myself should never be malevolent. The worst version of myself should only ever be visible to those closest to me. So I put my regret to work. "Remember that time I backed into someone on purpose? Good. Make the worst version of yourself invisible to a stranger. And never be "that asshole" in anyone's memory again."
Thank you for reading.
Aside of the week:
There’s a motorcyclist who speeds down my street every morning between 6 and 7 o’clock. The speed limit on my street is 25mph. I don’t mind his speeding, but I was desperate to know how fast he was going as he flashed by. So I measured the distance between two trees far apart in my yard, bought a stopwatch, and made a speed chart to put on the wall under the window in my office. When his rear wheel passes behind the first tree, I start the clock, stopping it when the same wheel passes behind the second tree. It’s not precise, but it’s close enough to give me a ballpark, thus satisfying my curiosity. The distance between the trees is about 123 feet. This morning’s time? 1.44 seconds. That’s about 65mph.
Until next week.
Have a great weekend,
— Tim