Bad decisions teach us more than good ones!

Double Vision with Charlie Adley

Ah come on Charlie! Away with your psychobabble! You must have some regrets. It’s not as if your life’s been screw-up free!” I laugh and agree with my friend, but to answer his question I have to switch off and scan my memory files for regret.

Have I made decisions that in hindsight were naive, destructive, or just plain stupid?

Yes, m’Lud. Guilty as charged.

So why do I not plead guilty to regretting them?

Well, m’Lud, those were decisions I chose to make at those times, and each one was driven either by love or knowing no better, so yes, they were bad decisions but no, I don’t regret making them.

Searching, searching and there, yes, back in 1985, I had the chance to be taught how to sail and passed it by.

I regret that.

After leaving marketing and retiring from the corporate world in October ’84, I’d left England and travelled from New York to San Francisco via the Bahamas, and by the time I flew out of LA I was ready to chill on Tahiti.

While Polynesia caters amply for the rich, those down in the basement of travelling budgets dwell in giant straw huts, balanced on stilts above mud pools breeding mosquitoes the size of tennis balls.

Holed up in the hut during days of rain, I chatted to Cory, an Anglo-Saxon Californian Amazon tanned hazelnut brown from her 6 foot 3 crown all the way down. Naturally physically attracted to her, I also felt wary, as she was prone to spouting irritating maxims such as:

“The more I say ‘I’, the more likely I am to lie!”

To these I replied silently in my head

“Speak for yourself love!” while my insecure 24 year-old face forced an expression of awe at her wisdom.

We travelled to Auckland together and in the hostel lobby I found Cory, talking to some old geezer.

To read Charlie’s column in full, please see this week’s Galway City Tribune.

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