Rewriting History

Everyone has their 'do-over' moment, the one where they would gladly go back in time and change the outcome of their life. For me personally, I have three.

1) I'd love to go back to 1986 and slap myself at a certain party, where I stupidly thought I was the date of the host; looking back, I clearly wasn't. I'd grab my soul mate (yes, met him that night!) and never let him go. Just to see if we'd ever get past the dating point and get rid of this 'what if' feeling. Twenty-four years later, that initial spark is still there, but we're bound by moral constraints not to act on it. He does get to be the hero in all of my books though:)

2) I'd go back and completely start 1987 all over again. This was the year of my rebellion, and in retrospect, I let a lot of opportunities go to waste. It was nothing but a year of one bad decision after another.

3) If I had to pick just one selfish moment, I'd go back to 1988 and take the opportunity nearly granted to go to Hawaii for Spring Break. My on-again, off-again boyfriend had hinted he was putting together a big surprise; my roommate and I speculated on everything from plane tickets to a diamond engagement ring. But since I 'knew him so well', when the opportunity arose for a relationship closer to home, I grabbed it. And then found out my 'surprise' was going to be a round-trip ticket for an awesome Spring Break! Since my budding 'relationship' was only two days old at that point, I offered to call it off. But he realized I needed something he couldn't provide at the moment: Love and affection closer to home. So he kept his money and I continued my second year of self-destruct-mode. The only thing my taking the trip to Hawaii would probably accomplish would be to finally put an end to the on-again, off-again part. I think if we had actually spent an entire week together, instead of a day here, a weekend there, we would have burned out a lot quicker than we did. But on the flip side, it did enable me to stay in touch with my soul mate!

The downside of any of these coming true?
-I wouldn't have met my now-husband;
-I wouldn't be the same person I am today;
-My kids wouldn't be the kids I have now.
-Would I be published? Who knows? My stuff might be buried in boxes somewhere, for only my enjoyment.

So when you put it like that, I'm pretty happy with the way life's turned out after all.