This is a story from childhood that involves a simple mistake that led to a lifelong regret.
My parents were good friends with another couple, the Drabicks. The Drabick’s had a cottage up north in Algonquin Park north of where we lived in Ontario, Canada.
The Drabicks invited our family to join their family for a vacation up at their cottage.
So we loaded up our stuff into our car, picked up a bunch of groceries and followed them up to their cottage and had an enjoyable time, except for one simple mistake…
We were out on their boat collecting minnows with a net to use as bait. The minnows were collected after hours of collecting and put in a metal container that hung from the boat. The minnows were being kept alive in this container until they would be used for fishing.
Somehow I touch something or moved a lever, or something and the minnows escaped causing us to have to start over catching the minnows. I felt so bad that I made everyone work so hard and then have to start over. They forgave me – a simple mistake – but I never forgave myself.
A funny thing happened a couple of years ago.My brother and I were talking at our niece’s wedding and that incident somehow came up in conversation. I think we were talking about regrets. My brother mentioned that he had made that mistake of releasing the minnows. I quickly corrected him and told him I had done it, not him.
‘Turns out, we both had been living with this regret. We both thought we had done the mistake and had lived with the regret all those years.
At this point I have to be honest, either I did it or I somehow I vicariously covered for my brother.
The truth is that there never was any evidence that either of us did it. They asked if anyone moved the lever and I said I thought I may have done so.
How crazy to think we both held on to that regret for so many years and it wasn’t even anything worth regretting…