Unfashionable regrets
It's fashionable to say "I regret the things I didn't do, not the things I did."

I'm unfashionable. I mainly (but not entirely) regret stupid things I did. The potentially smart things I failed to do mostly turned out to be stupid in hindsight, or even in direct sight**.

Here's a nice pair of regretting action vs regretting inaction. The pairing is congruent in time and space, involving two 10th grade teachers whose rooms were adjacent.

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Mr Dickerson taught history. He was a highly competent teacher. He wanted us to discuss rationally, and he actively and consistently encouraged discussion.

Since 1975, all requests for "discussion" mean I GIVE THE COMMANDS. YOU BEND OVER AND OPEN YOUR ASSHOLE AND TAKE MY COMMANDS.

Not Mr Dickerson. He meant it. So I took him up on it, idiotically correcting his pronunciation of Nazi as Naxi. He took the criticism rationally, without flaring up. But I wasn't really arguing, and I didn't have anything MEANINGFUL to say at that point. I was just being an adolescent dickhead. Like most older men in 1965, Mr Dickerson had actually fought the Naxis, so he was entitled to call them whatever he wanted.

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In the next room, Miss Marley "taught" "English". She ruthlessly and rigorously enforced all the false and malicious grammarhoid "rules". And not just in class. When she heard us using "bad grammar" in casual discussions before class, she stormed over and "corrected" us.

These "corrections" always ended with YOU MUST SPEAK EK RIT LY. She carefully enunciated the three distinct syllables of EKRITLY, providing an example of EKRIT SPEECH to enlighten the unwashed masses.

I regret that I didn't stand up to Miss Marley. At that time I knew FAR MORE about real grammar than she did. I had been reading serious linguistics books for many years, and I knew the real grammar of English. I could have assembled a rigorous response to each of the grammarrhoid "rules", using real authorities.

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In the first instance I was imitating Miss Marley, "correcting" Mr Dickerson's insignificant pronunciation "error". I should have been resisting Miss Marley, not imitating her.

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** Footnote: There isn't a proper word for this. We need a midpoint word between hindsight and foresight, meaning clearly true by the facts available at the time when the judgment was made. Maybe nowsight would do the job?

Labels: coot-proofing, TMI

  ¶ 11:11 PM