The meaning of regret, per the great J.P. Garwood, language occasionally modified:
When I was in high school there was a big, fat, mean priest named Father DeLeo. Priest or not, the guy was the definition of a creep. He liked nothing better than to feel superior to others, and to belittle anyone whenever he could. Maybe he liked scotch just a little more that belittling, but it couldn't have been much more. I had this man as a teacher for a class called "morality". A class in which I got a "D". Yes, I got a "D" in morality.
Anyway, Father DeLeo would occasionally give his black priest clothes a rest and wear a tan courderoy suit. Not just the jacket, but the whole suit. He wore this on the day he was going to teach about sexual morality. As if learning sexual morality from a guy who swore off sex wasn't bad enough, he had to wear this silly tan suit that made him look like a lazy-boy chair.
When the class began he closed the door dramatically, and turned to the class and said "sex without love is just f*cking". If you dared to laugh he may have hauled off and smacked you in the head, so you just had to choke it back. After the initial shock of what he was saying wore off, I noticed, as did others, that his fly was unzipped. There he was, ranting and raving in front of a bunch of high school juniors about sex, and his fly was undone. I sat front row center. Luck of the draw I suppose. At some point into the class he was directly in front of me, zipper in the down position, and he said "AND NO BL*W J*BS!". He said it right in front of me. An hour later I realized that if I had said "Father, I don't even find you attractive" I could have been a legend.
That is regret.
"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers." Thomas Pynchon, GRAVITY'S RAINBOW
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." Philip K. Dick
My blog: http://www.roscoewrites.blogspot.com/
