regrets and things i wish i hadn't said

This is the time of year to look back on where we’ve been and what we’ve done this year, and what we’re going to do and where we’re going to go next year.

For your old buddy Dick, however, this is the time of year I look back at my entire life—especially my recent life, or at least my life over the past decade—and think about what I’ve done. And how I’ve acted and the things I said. Tonight, and for most of the last few years, something I said once keeps coming back to me and I wish I had a chance to take it back.

Here is the story.

I had a boss one time who second-guessed everything I did. Whether it was an important business decision or something trivial, he always had some kind of negative comment about it and he always bragged how he could have done it better. Here is an example. I ordered some material from Europe the day of July 3. The material took about six months to engineer, manufacture and assemble and took about a month to move across the Atlantic in a cargo container. Well, when the shipment showed up in February, there was an ice storm and the container couldn’t deliver because of the bad weather. He told me if I would have ordered it a day earlier, it would have been there before the storm. He contended that had he been responsible for placing the order, he would have made sure it was done on July 2.

Once, on a Tuesday morning, the guy who ran the football pool handed a wad of bills to one of the engineers who was in the break room. The engineer shoved the bills in his pocket while the football pool guy handed me a ten-dollar bill.

“Tough luck, Clinch,” said the engineer.

“What’s the deal?” asked my boss.

“We both picked every game right this week,” I said. “It came down to the tie-breaker on Monday Night Football. It was total points scored in the game. They were two good defensive teams, and neither had solid offenses, so I went low. There were defensive backs intercepting passes all night long and dancing in the end zones after running them back all the way. Big score. I lost.”

“Dammit, Clinch,” said my boss. “You should have known those defenses would be scoring a lot.”

One day my boss was on my ass big time about something that required a three-month lead-time and it was going to be a day late. He told me I should have ordered it a day sooner.

I had finally had it. I exploded. I yelled the following at my boss.

“If I wanted to listen to some fat cocksucker tell me I was wrong, I know a rather heavy nigger whore in Kansas City, Kansas, who likes to point out my shortcomings when I go to visit her. I’d go listen to her instead of you.”

Not a week goes by that I don’t think about that day and wish I could take back what I said. More than anything in the world, I wish I would have said “black whore.”

I know we all have regrets and things we wish we could take back, and that is mine.

Or my name isn’t Dick Clinch.