Second Chances For All But The Dead

Life is a wonderful thing in that it always allows for what we called as kids, “the Do-Over.” All mistakes, all errors, all transgressions could be repaired, resolved and then eliminated by simply stating the words, “Do Over!” When playing “Army” as a kid, when there was a disagreement as to whether you really did “kill” your opponent, a “Do Over” would be called, the game would be reset at some point prior to the disagreement and the game proceeded from there. In sandlot baseball, when there was a close call regarding a pitch being a ball o strike, a “Do-Over” would handle the problem.

I remember those days now very fondly because I m not sure we live in a “Do-Over” world anymore. We are free to make mistakes, make errors in judgment and even do some really stupid things, but the consequences are now permanent. There really is a “permanent record” on which everything gets written. It is in all aspects of our lives; credit histories, criminal records, drivers license records, marriage and divorce records, even our medical records. The problem is that there is no longer any such thing as a “Do-Over”. Once your record is blemished, you have been marked with the modern day equivalent of a Scarlet Letter forever. The ultimate example of this is the sexual predator. Imagine your are 18 years old and you meet a 16 year-old girl. You engage in completely consensual sex . When you break up, she is pissed off and tells Mom and Dad how you “used” her. Mom and Dad now call the cops, you go to jail and get labeled a sexual predator…FOREVER !!! How many of us men are searching our pasts and saying, “Thank God. There but by the grace of God, go I ?” I was on the opposite side of that equation. I was 16 and my girlfriend in high school was 18. She is legally a sex offender in this day and age, and I thank the good Lord for her taking that chance with me (Thank you Kathy as well...)

When I was in high school we had this really cute blonde, blue-eyed chorus teacher. She was, in the vernacular of the common hordes, “HOT!!” If she had decided to grace me as a teacher’s pet with sexual favors, I would have been a hero with my classmates, at least the men in the class. I certainly would not have been damaged by the experience and I would still think about it and sigh deeply at the memory of it. I certainly do at the fantasy.

When I was younger, I did things that would now be felonies. I did not get caught for the most part and when I did, I was given a good scolding by the authorities and then sent home to be beaten within an inch of my life by my Mother followed by the same when my Father got home. A lesson was learned and no permanent damage was done to my future. I was talking to a guy the other day who, about 40 years ago drove around in a large black Cadillac bought for him by his Father. It looked like some sort of gangster-mobile. One day, he and a couple of his friends, in a pre-arranged scenario, had a friend walk down the street in front of a movie theater. My friend and his friends screeched to a stop in front of the movie theater and fired a gun loaded with blanks at their other friend, who fell to the ground. Two guys dressed in trench coats and gangster-style hats jumped out of the Caddy and put the “body” into the car and sped off. This of course caused a manhunt by the police, but even if they had been found, which they were not, it would have resulted in one of the stern “talking too’s” and not a felony police record. Today that would have lead to prison time, and a lot of it, probably.

I, myself, engaged in similar stunts as a kid. We would have a boy in the back of a pick-up truck lying down with one leg hanging over the side, sticking out from under a tarp. At a red light, with plenty of traffic as “witnesses”, the passenger would get out of the pick-up, look around furtively, and then tuck the leg under the tarp, quickly getting back in the truck which would then speed through the intersection when the light turned green. This would eventually lead to a stop by police who would throw back the tarp to have the s**t scared out of them by the now very alive “dead body” in the back of the truck. Yes, I know that the guy in the back of the pick-up was lucky he did not get shot, but it was in a day and age where cops did not have their guns drawn when went into an empty restroom.

The other situation in which we rarely get “Do-Overs” is in relationships. Sure we can have an on-again, off-again relationship, but that is not the same as a real break-up, an extended period apart and then a re-discovery of the relationship. As a matter of fact, some of the most romantic stories are about couples that were young lovers that parted ways, met and married other people and then, by divorce or death, became single again, to discover that long, lost love of the past and rekindle the embers that must have been dormant for all those years. It is very rare, however, so I really consider it the exception rather than the rule.

Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to make a mistake, discover you made a mistake and then be able to correct it in a “Do-Over?” Wouldn’t it be nice to not have a permanent record follow you around everywhere you go, for the rest of your life? I guess there is no such thing anymore as forgive and forget, but everyone should get a second chance every now and then, well, for everyone but the dead maybe.