◉ 052 | One of My Regrets

I don’t watch

TV.

I don’t binge

streaming shows.

I am keen

on art.

I follow

UFC.

And F1.

That’s it.

But last night,

I watched

the pilot

of The Madison.

I picked it

for nostalgia—

Michelle Pfeiffer,

and

Kurt Russell.

The series

is predictable.

The acting

is mediocre.

But it is about

regret.

A topic

I think about

from time to time.

An interview

from a nursing home

always comes to mind.

Elderly people

near the end

of their lives

got asked

about their regrets.

The answer

was always

the same.

They had no regrets

for the things

they did wrong.

They had regrets

for the things

they didn’t do.

I don’t have

many regrets.

But one

came back to me.

Maybe it was

the wilderness

in the series.

Maybe it was

the outdoor toilet

with a simple hole

in the ground.

It goes like this.

School summer holidays.

Scout era.

Ten of us.

Five boys.

Five girls.

Something like that.

Two nights

in my grandpa’s

old stone house.

No running water.

But there was

a well

with a metal bucket.

No electricity.

But we had

candles

and torches.

Two rooms.

Both covered

in stone slabs.

One empty.

One with

a massive,

old,

smelly bed.

And of course,

us dickheads

picked that one.

Five boys

like sardines

in sleeping bags

on the bed.

The girls

slept

in the other room.

On bare stone.

In the morning,

I saw them.

Tired.

Stiff.

Roughed up

by the floor.

I felt guilty.

I knew

we should swap.

And what did I do

for the second night?

Nothing.