By Joe Rector
“Would of, could of, should of” is a common thing we say around here. It’s a way of verbalizing our regrets over not having done things in our earlier years. We question why so much of our time has been spent on “piddling” instead of becoming better folks. I’ve done plenty of wondering myself; I suppose doing so comes with the years that pile up. So, here’s at least a partial list of “would of, could of, and should of.”
First, I know the proper way to say this line is “would have, could have, or should have.” The English teacher in me insisted that I clear this up. The first change comes with math. I never understood combining numbers and letters. I still protest that “X” has no numerical value. It’s a letter used in writing. Still, I wish I had worked harder to study algebra and geometry. Being able to solve mathematical problems makes dealing with so many things easier. Amy handles finances for us because I’m such a blockhead when it comes to numbers.
Geometry never made sense to me. My mother was a whiz in the subject and said she could see in her mind the angles and other shapes in problems. I only saw lines zigzagging on the page. I’m sure that having committed the theorems to memory might have helped, but they still made no sense in so many cases.
My plans after high school were to major in vocal music and to become a choir director. My advisor told me I would have to take advanced French since I’d taken two years of the language in high school. The problem was that I didn’t learn much in those classes. Repeating what was being said by the teacher or on some recording did nothing for my acquisition of French. In the second year, the teacher was kind, but I never caught on to the terms she used for using the correct verb or pronoun forms. At any rate, I abandoned my quest to become a choir director and became an English teacher instead. That move turned out to be a blessing.
If I could go back with the knowledge I have today, I would enroll in a shop class. Then I would have known how to use tools correctly. That way, I wouldn’t have cut off my left ring finger a couple of years ago. I also might have even learned to draw a straight line or to level two sides of something that I made.
Taking that class would also have made geometry more relevant and better understood. I wouldn’t struggle to square up a project, and I might understand the differences between king studs and jack studs. In the end, I might have saved plenty of money that we paid to people to complete renovation projects and other projects around the house.
At one point in my life, I decided that I should have chosen another career. My first year’s pay as a teacher was $7200 a year. I thought that if I could make $10,000 that I would be rich. When the children came along, I realized that I wasn’t pulling my weight financially. I left teaching for about 3 ½ years. During that time, I worked with schools on fundraising programs, and in another job, I was a headhunter who placed engineers in jobs, as well as running the light industrial division (part-time jobs) for the company. The Good Lord watched over me and eventually steered me back to the profession where I belonged. Some might disagree, but I think I was a good teacher who helped students to learn how to write papers, learn some grammar, and maybe even enjoy some literature.
I suppose all of us have long lists of things we might do differently if we could go back in time. That’s not going to happen, so our best course of action is to learn now what we ignored in our younger years.
