I saw this hand-made poster taped to a parking meter on College Street near Caplansky’s yesterday and had to take a photo:
As John Greenleaf Whittier wrote:
For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: “It might have been!"
All too true. The stuff I really regret – thankfully, there’s very little of that — is what I didn’t do.
Thanks to the ambiguity introduced by the word “just”, the author of the message might be expressing regret that the act had escalated beyond kissing and into serious “viewer discretion is advised” territory, which is probably something you shouldn’t be doing in a friend’s kitchen.
2 replies on “It Might Have Been”
Adding single quotes around “friend’s kitchen” would also make it more interesting…
I like the suggestion implied by ‘just’ – but I think ‘when I had the chance’ locks it down as a ‘not enough’ rather than ‘too much’.
I remember hearing a very old guy giving advice – I like to think it was Studs Turkel but it probably wasn’t – and he said he was at the age where what he thought about the most was all the women he *hadn’t* hooked up with when he had the chance.
Good thing for all those 24-year-olds out there to keep in mind!