What We Don't Do

 Hey folks, so I haven't felt very inspired to sit down and throw some words on this thing in a little while. Guess we all kinda have dry spells like that here and there so don't go too hard on me, or yourself. However, I recently found

a little inspiration. If you know me, you know that I have a little coffee club each week with my dad, uncle, and grampa. Sometimes my brother makes it when he's in town. Anyway, our conversations twist, wind, and cover all sorts of topics. Baseball, hunting, fishing trips, family events, politics, fire, work, life now, then, and in the future, sometimes death. We laugh and sometimes shed a tear, usually at the same time. But, a recurring theme seems to be evident lately. More than once we have talked about our regrets, if we have any, and what we would have, or wouldn't have, done differently. 

Before Covid came, we used to go on an annual baseball trip. The Fuecker boys would board a plane or hop in the truck and hit the road to watch the Minnesota Twins take on a series against a rival on the road. So far we've been to Toronto, Oakland (San Francisco kinda), and Cleveland. Not only do we watch the ballgames but we try to "soak up the city" and get all the experiences. Whether that's my grandpa getting yelled at by a crack head junkie in San Fran or finding a hole-in-the-wall speakeasy in Cleveland. I mean we've done, seen, and been to all sorts of things on these trips and they always bring memories that I'll carry with me for a lifetime. I could write an entire post about each day of each trip, that's how memorable and wild it gets. We don't have a single regret about anything that we've done on these trips. However, we do have one regret about something that we didn't do. 

On our way to Cleveland we stopped in Westfield, Indiana to watch my brother play in a baseball showcase series. If you know anything about Indiana, you know that there isn't much to do in this area. So one night, after struggling to find a bar to waste some time at, we finally found a run down nowhere town with a dive and decide to sling a few. Now, it's just my dad, my uncle, and I at this point. Immediately upon walking in everyone promptly turned in their chairs, took a drag from their cigarettes, and gave us a good up-down stare with bored, but surprised eyes. We knew that we kinda stood out in this regular, small town crowd. It was as if we walked straight into someone's living room without even knocking on the front door. Very strange vibe. So after the music came to a screeching halt and we found our seats, we ordered a couple beers and chatted. It wasn't 'til about an hour later that a young blonde gal, who was obviously the town hottie, got up on the makeshift stage and announced that there will be karaoke that night. Excited for the show, we ordered a couple more and waited. Man oh man, the performances were awful. Except one guy dressed up like a 1950s FBI agent (combover, thick-rimmed glasses, those old suits with a black tie and white tucked-in shirt, pens in pocket look) that sang both parts of Toby Keith and Willie Nelson's "Beer For My Horses" perfectly. Half our entertainment was watching that blonde simultaneously fend off dudes while MCing the event and slinging back more shots of Jameson than I've ever seen anyone take. As we sat there watching we thought and said, "Man, let's all get up there for one song!" Shit, I mean what did we have to lose? We didn't know any of these people and we would likely never see any of them again. What's three minutes of a little embarrassment in our lives? Hell it probably would have been healthy for us. Instead, we sat there watching awful performance after awful performance just sipping our beers. How lame. For some silly reason we never mustered up the courage to go up and sing a song. For the Fuecker boys, that was odd. We can handle a little humiliation- we did all grow up with the last name FUECKER, ya know. At the end of the night I decided to cut a deck of cards with the bartender to go double or nothing on our drink tab, promptly lost, paid twice what I owed, and went back to the hotel a loser, AND without any cool stories to tell. Bummer.

As I was saying earlier in this post, there's been a recurring theme- we've talked a lot about our regrets (and there ain't many). But, one of our biggest regrets of that trip was not getting up on the makeshift joke of a stage in that cigarette smoke-filled bar, in the middle of nowhere Indiana, and singing "Man of Constant Sorrow" in the form of the Soggy Bottom Boys for a bunch of random people we'll never see again. We just can't get past that. Taking a step back, and thinking more about our regrets, not as a group but as individuals and within our own lives, we realized that we never really regret the things that we have done- at least in doing something you find out. You have an answer to the "What would have happened" question. You have a sense of closure, satisfaction, of knowing or learning from your action. 

Nah, we don't regret the things that we've done, we regret the things that we don't do. Because in not doing, you never know. You'll always carry that "Well, what if?" 

So let this be your sign to go get your answers. Cheers.