I'll never make THAT mistake again...

I have this friend, lets call her Lorraine.

She believes that mistakes happen for a reason, that they arrive to teach us something we wouldn't otherwise learn. She is adamant about this. I think Lorraine is wise.

I also think that there are two kinds of mistakes. There are polite mistakes. They drop off their little bundle of "chock it up to experience" and then depart leaving the mind informed and at peace. The rude mistakes take up permanent residence. They regularly reappear in the mind's eye to embarrass us anew, sometimes in the middle of the day, but more often at night, just as we are about to sleep.

This is a tale of two such mistakes.

Mistake #1:

My very first writing teacher offered the class this assignment: describe a single event from two points of view.

Despite being utterly unfamiliar with the situation, I chose to write about childbirth, from the mother's perspective and the doctor's.

It started like this:

"I have been wrapped in a shroud of pain..."

Really. Would anyone like a side of gag with their slab of melodrama?

I destroyed the paper copy of that piece decades ago, but that line still creeps into my head now and again, and each time it does, I wince."I have been wrapped in a shroud of pain..."

I know I wrote better lines for that prof, but I cannot recall a single one. I'm equally certain that that hideous sentence will follow me to the grave. In fact, those might be the last words I utter.

"I have been wrapped in a shroud of pain..."

Mistake #2

I ran the Last Chance half marathon on Sunday. It was a great day and a wonderful race. My tights didn't exactly fit they way they should. I should have tried those stretchy babies on a few days before the race and realized that I needed better fitting ones. That small mistake cost me a little chaffing in the nethers. In spite of that, I ran a personal best.

On Monday I went to the pool to lengthen those race-stressed muscles. It was a lovely swim, all loose and floppy, just the way my coach told me it should be.

...and afterwards a soak in the hot tub.

Of an early afternoon, the hot tub at the Y is often populated with retired gents who make their workouts as much a social occasion as a physical outing. They congregate in a group of 6-8, sit along the edge of the hot pool, feet dangling in the water and they shout at one another over the roar of the jets.

Yesterday, as I approached the hot tub, they fell silent. Their eyes seemed to take on some frantic life of their own, darting from place to place, but always returning, ever-so-briefly, to me.

As I stepped over the rim of the tub, I glanced down. The abrasions of the day before had reacted with the chlorinated water. Red patches graced my inner thighs, bright patches. They positively glowed, their size and shape - dead ringers for giant hickies.

The old men did not utter a single word the entire time I soaked in the hot water.

I guess I could have stood up and addressed them, explained that I was the victim of ill fitting pants, not debauchery...but I preferred to let them think whatever it was they were thinking.

It occurs to me that another person might have reacted differently, that being caught with hickey marked thighs might be humiliating, while writing a really bad sentence might slip on as easily as a favourite sweater.

I think that Lorraine is right, our mistakes do educate us, and tell us as much about who we are as they do about what we've done. They help us define ourselves, they shape our future.

Perhaps the mistakes that haunt us most are the ones we will have to make again.

Trying to get it right more often than I get it wrong...

Kari