BY JACK GODBEY

Community columnist

I have always been a believer that we should live life to the fullest so that when we look back on our lives we don’t experience feelings of regret. 

While we all experience times in our lives which we wish that we handled some experience better, I can say that I don’t regret many things. Whether it be an end to a relationship or losing a job that I enjoyed, those experiences were rough while going through them but they made me a stronger person and gave me a lot of good memories and is part of who I am today which I wouldn’t trade for anything. 

However, there are things I do regret. 

For example, I often regret having that piece of pie at dinner. It looks good at the time but later when I realize there’s not enough Rolaids in the world to ease my discomfort, I jump into the river of regret for one more lap.

I always regret going to Walmart on a Saturday. I don’t know why I continue to do this. It’s not as if I don’t own a calendar. 

However, I still continue to mosey on down there to pick up a loaf of bread and some bananas and soon realize that I may as well have just walked into the big tent at the carnival. I dodge speeding carts to fight my way to the bread aisle only to realize that one of the most popular islands in the store is also one of the narrowest. 

I grab my items and get back to my truck happy to be in one piece until the next Saturday when I forget all about it and repeat the process all over again.  

On the way home from the store, I found myself deep in thought as I often do and my mind drifted back to things I regret from my  younger years. 

I recalled one occasion in which I learned a huge lesson in regret. When I was a child, my favorite thing in the world was my stuffed monkey. He was my partner in crime in that whatever mischief I got into he was right there with me. 

One Sunday morning I was getting in some last minute playtime before leaving for church and I left the stuffed monkey on the porch. My parents instructed me several times to put the monkey in my room for safekeeping but for whatever reason I did not. 

When we arrived back home from church, the monkey was gone. I began running around and yelling that he had been monkey napped. My mother organized a search party with each kid responsible for a sector of the farm. It was straight from the plot of a NCIS TV show. 

Imagine my heartbreak when my brother came back with only a monkey leg. It seems that the family dog liked my monkey as much as I did and tore the monkey into several pieces and scattered it across the farm. 

By the end of the hour, we had recovered two legs, two arms and the head. My mother got out her sewing machine and proceeded with emergency surgery. With the use of some scrap pieces of clothing, she formed a new torso for the monkey, attached the limbs and head, and returned him to me before nightfall. 

I made a bad decision that day back in 1974 that I regretted. I hope that you have people in your life as I did that help you put together the pieces when you make a bad decision.