The 'Undo' Button

The Undo Button

I have a colleague who, every time I'm in the staff room, seems to be having problems with the computer. The F word quite often figures quite heavily in our conversation as he's usually desperately trying to finish a work sheet or print something out five minutes before the lesson is about to start. In the past two weeks, I have actually been able to help him on two occasions, which for a technological dunce like me is amazing. I suppose it's always good to know that there is someone out there less skilled than oneself.

Last week, I introduced him to the joys of the 'Undo' button. He loved the fact that you can hit it at any time and delete whatever mess you happen to have made. Then I started thinking – wouldn't it be great if there was an Undo button in real life? At a mouse click you could take back every disastrous action and every word, and wipe yourself as clean as a New Document. You could also try out a variety of scenarios, and if you didn't like the outcome, undo them immediately.

I clearly remember a conversation that I had a couple of years ago with my friend M. She told me that there are only two things in her life that she has ever been truly certain about. 1. That getting married was the right thing to do and 2. That two children was enough. She is divorced and has three boys.

I have been thinking recently about what mistakes I wish I hadn't made, or things that I should have done differently. There were three biggies but 'Not getting married so quickly' would be top of my list. Getting engaged after knowing someone for only ten months was probably not the smartest thing I've ever done, even though at the time, I had that same certainty that M had when she got married. As it turned out there were a couple of deal breakers hidden in there which I knew nothing about – less attractive traits which my ex kept hidden from me until they resurfaced two years into our marriage. Maybe if we had waited, I would have found out about them and been able to make a more informed decision.

I also wish that I'd tried harder to be an actor instead of being too afraid of rejection. That regret stems from the bad university choice I made – I was stuck at Bristol writing essays on Futurism whilst my friends off my A Level course were being trained as actors. But at eighteen, what did I know about life or about what I really wanted? I knew Bristol was a good university and to be fair, having a degree from such a well respected institution has opened a few doors for me in my teaching career.

More recently, I wish that I could hit the undo button on last Saturday night. I allowed the hot guy that I have been writing about (him off FB chat) to reject me and then I hung around. Actually what I should have done was plastered a big smile on my face, said 'See you later' and jumped into a taxi. This was immediately after he had told me that he wasn't really interested. Instead, I put my arms around him and tried (a little bit and in a very sneaky way) to get him to change his mind. He did waver and we kissed a couple of times. But I woke up on Sunday morning seriously regretting that loss of self control. I had, for a couple of minutes, shown him how much I like him and had been totally open in the way that you can only be after a series of lethal cocktails. I put myself in a stupidly weak position.

In an attempt to re -dress the balance, I have been cool and calm at work and ignored a couple of cheeky emails that he sent. Seemed to work because he turned up in my room on Friday afternoon looking sheepish and we spent half an hour chatting. Inside, I kept telling myself that I needed to be calm, cool and collected (the Rules) although I desperately wanted to do things to him that were definitely not suitable for a work environment. I know that I need to wait for this guy to sort himself out and good things are always worth waiting for.

Writing this, it has just occurred to me that my regrets centre around making snap decisions – perhaps the moral of the story is for me to consider every option more carefully and not to be in so much of a rush all the time. Also I don't think I'll be drinking a mix of mojitos and martinis again any time soon. Cocktails make me drunk in a stupid way and from experience I know that a hangover combined with that ashamed feeling is the worst thing to wake up to on a Sunday morning.

I suppose now should be the cheesy bit where I comment on how I have learnt important lessons from all the mistakes I've made and the incredibly stupid things I've done. And at the risk of sounding trite, yes, I have learnt from my mistakes in both my personal and work life. But wouldn't it be great if we could try out a variety of scenarios and pick the best one?