Ya' know Jerry, this subject has been bothering me for several years now. Like most of us I have gone through several lifetimes in the one I have lived. As my life moved along some of the lifetimes overlapped but at one point I had to make a choice. I don't believe we make bad choices. In retrospect the choice may have been a complete and total disaster if we are honest about it. But at the time we make it we don't say. "Well I'm gonna' do this because it's fuckin' idiotic." No we do things because they are the best we can decide at the time. So we look back with that knowledge that hindsight may be 20-20 but we did our best at the time.

Now I was never troubled by this and I never felt the need to justify decisions. Nor did I ever talk much about what might have been or if I really had a chance to do B instead of A. It just never occurred to me. THis may not sound like the same as your bottle of Squirt, but trust me, there is something similar in the feeling. I guess it is trying to decide if you were realistic then or are you being realistic now.....or did they change the formula of the pop?

A few years ago an old friend showed up at my home. I was gone but he sat and talked to Karen whom he had never met for hours. As teens and young men we had been best friends and on a similar mission......to be jazz musicains, he on trombone and myself as a reeds player. At one point I made a choice different than his. So he spends a few hours telling Karen how I wasted my life!

I guess on the one hand it is kind of nice to know that my memories aren't overblown bullshit and on the other I wanted to kick the shit out of him (after a few big hugs). The worst part of all this is that I have had to revisit those times and actually wonder if I DID make a good decision when I know damn well I did. But it forces you to look at every choice including the last one that I'm now living when before I was just fat, dumb, and happy, knowing I always made good decisions!(:<))

Spaw