I'd turn the world to see you

1. If you could retract one lie you have told in your life, which would it be? 

     that I didn't mind when my friends didn't visit me, during the decade when I was single and living in the Flat. I made the trip to see them, to attend their parties and holidays and funerals and command-performance get-togethers. I manipulated my time off from work, and definitely my visits with family, so that their schedules could be accommodated. I tried really hard to stay in touch, because "I was the one who left." Looking back on it now, I wish I'd just let those one-sided things wither. One person can't do all the work to keep a friendship going.

2. If you had to eliminate one season permanently (spring, summer, autumn, or winter), which one would go? 

    surprisingly, I would wipe out summer. That may be entirely due to it being revoltingly hot and humid
outside as I write this, my central air chugging away. Ask me again six months from now and the answer may be the reverse. Suffice it to say, I'd never give up spring or fall.

3. If you had to paint your entire home, inside and out, a single color other than white, what color would you pick? 

    that's funny—my entire home (inside anyway) is variations on a theme already. It ranges from greenish gray to grayish green. What started out, when I first moved in, seeming kind of soothing and mellow now seems prisonesque and terribly drab.

    If I had to choose one new color, it would likely be somewhere in the blue family, since that's where I gravitate when deciding how to decorate. However, it'll be a while before I devote time or energy to making such changes.

4. If you could undo one sexual encounter in your life so that it never happened, which one would it be? 

    the one that no one knows about because even at the time it was happening I was already regretting it. That entire year is an embarrassment to ego and humanity anyway, but that one night should be obliterated from all memory.  

5. If you had to name the dumbest purchase you've ever made, which would it be? 

    there have been so many. I'll pick the Nordic Track, even despite the ultimate resolution. That was an example of my sometimes elaborate plans to resolve relatively simple problems. It was a giant hassle from start to finish, and what's worse, I discovered that I didn't like the activity.

6. If you could cancel one vacation you have taken, lose all memory of it, and get your money back, what vacation would you choose? 

    oh my God, that's easy: I would wipe the one a couple of years ago that ended in confusion/miscommunication, turning into buckets of tears, morphing into some yelling, and finally resulting in hurt feelings and stubbornness that lasted for way too long. 

    It wasn't such a bad vacation in itself, just got a little brittle toward the end because of other stuff going on in the world, and in our lives. Overall we travel very well together, and I wish we didn't have that ugly outlier to muck up the average.

7. If you could romantically kiss someone that you never have, who would you want it to be? 

    one of my lawyers.  

TERRIBLE video - good song 

("Shoulda Kissed You", Ryan Cabrera)

 

[from If...Questions for the Game of Life; the title quotation is from #7, above]