Regrets, I’ve Had a Few

I wish my former high school had given courses on how to navigate life’s perilous journey. West Park Secondary School had lots of courses on home economics, car maintenance and even refrigeration but it didn’t offer life-skill courses like why money management was important, and the joys of taking jobs that offered pensions. (Maybe the school did but nobody directed me to them.)

Here is how West Park failed me.

Choosing a Career Path: I wasn’t at all prepared for how my life turned out. Because I was considered a talented writer by guidance counselors, I was directed to pursue their dreams for me which involved leaving home and going to journalism school. In retrospect, that was clearly a bad choice for me given that the first full time job I ever got was at a newspaper that folded within months of my arrival.

That was definitely a clue I was in the wrong business.

Victimology: The counsellors should also have offered a course on how to spot a cheating, emotion-sucking male before I gave my heart to him. My first love cheated within seconds of us taking our marital vows and carried out a long-term affair with a woman he would later marry (while proudly announcing on Facebook that they’d been together for 40 years which included several years when I was still married to him).

The Pitfalls of Marriage and Childbirth: My second love was even worse, leaving me with three kids under six for (you guessed it!) another woman. Neither of these men offered me pensions though in the second case, he did offer me a pittance of child support for which he got a tax credit.

The Joys of Single Motherhood: The school also should have included a credit course on being a single mother, including information on how to negotiate work with three traumatized children in tow, and what to do when the bank tells you that you can’t keep your house because child support isn’t considered a viable source of income. Also, how to pay bills with no money in the bank!

Maybe if the school had scared me shitless, my life would have turned out differently. Maybe if I had listened to my mother and become a bank teller, I would be a vice-president of the Bank of Montreal eventually. But I didn’t take her advice, and here we are.

The Perils of Caregiving: Finally, I wish the school had offered a course in senior affairs management for those of us who now find ourselves negotiating caregiving for a spouse. A third of women over 65 are looking after their spouses on a full time basis, driving them to appointments, visiting them in the hospital, wiping their asses while also doing the house and yard work, and managing the car repair bills.

That doesn’t include those souls who are also minding grown-assed kids in their basement while tending to their parents, who may also have made some dubious career and life choices. (Thankfully, my parents are dead and my kids have flown the coop.)

When I left home, I had dreams of being somebody and now I’m a nobody on a fixed pension watching my bank account drain once again on a monthly basis in spite of my last ditched efforts in my 50s to save, save, save.

I was thinking that if I had to do it over again, high school I mean, I would definitely take courses in automobile maintenance and wood working instead of mathematics and Canadian history. Also home economics, I suppose. And French.

Probably wouldn’t have matter. Like most people, I forgot everything I learned in high school, except the prologue to the Canterbury Tales which remains embedded in my memory for ever.

Looking back, I realize that a person can’t change their heart, only their career path. This morning, as I write this, I realize I should have listened to my mother and become a bank teller instead of listening to those damned guidance counsellors.

Mothers always know.