Longing for a Do-Over or Two

How many times have you wished you could just rewind the present moment – just back maybe 5 minutes? Oh for a do-over!

Yesterday I had two of those moments. You can read about it on David’s Blog. But the long and short of it was in my efforts to do something positive, to clean out and clean up the shelves and closet near our side entrance, I knocked a bottle of concentrated garlic used for controlling mosquitoes outdoors onto the floor, where the top cracked off and it spilled. First of all, I wished for a do-over where it wouldn’t fall on the floor at all. Then I wished I had just quickly picked up the bottle to keep so much from spilling out. But no, instead I was worried about getting the dogs outside so they wouldn’t get in the mess.

My husband, who is a pretty smart guy, suggested that I just throw out the towels I used to sop up the spill, thereby avoiding contaminating the washing machine with the stinking garlic smell. But frugal person that I am, I thought it would just wash down the drain leaving clean, albeit old, towels. As the washing machine gave off an almost overwhelming garlic smell, I wanted another do-over. He had been so right on this one.

Why were my initial positive intentions going so wrong? I went to the store and bought a large bottle of Clorox. After a few cycles, the washing machine was once again approachable. But the smell wasn’t exactly gone.

I got up this morning and made another trip to the store. $41 later I had Pinesol, Lysol, a new mop, latex gloves, Febreze, and scented laundry detergent (we always use unscented) in an effort to camouflage the garlic smell.

I’m hopeful that it will just fade away with time, but I thought long and hard about those do-over requests all day today.

There have been a few other moments in my life that I wish I could have re-played. There was the time I treated the entire yard for dandelions with Weed-Be-Gone, only to almost kill the desirable shrubbery. There was another time when we were on vacation in Norway and I fell and broke a tooth.

Unfortunately life doesn’t usually give us a chance to fix mistakes. Instead we look for solutions or just live with the damage. This is called coping. Does coping build character? Are we better people from having dealt with our mistakes?

I can’t really answer those questions. But I can say I would love to receive 5 do-over tokens on January 1 each year, with the idea that I could cash them in any time during the year and earn a chance to get something right.

Have you experienced a wish for a do-over during the past year?