Misspent Youth

Inspired by a prompt from Sunday Scribblings

Misspent Youth. It implies a youth wasted, or worthless.

Well, even though I may have spent (or misspent as it were) a part of my youth getting wasted, I wouldn’t say all of those experiences were worthless. I learned from them and I always say (despite the dangling participle) a bad example is the best example to learn from. For example, despite all my best efforts at not going to class, I did actually learn some stuff, stuff I actually remember – like conjugating verbs in Spanish, and the definition of an isosceles triangle, and the capitals of all 50 states. Not stuff you need to know every day, but hey, I do pretty well at Trivial Pursuit.

Misspent. That word sounds to me like if you could go back and do it all again, you’d do it differently. Well I wouldn’t. I took some wrong turns, and I burnt some bridges, and I hardly ever answered the door when Ol’ Mr. Opportunity was knocking. But then some of those wrong turns led to other roads that turned out OK, and when the bridge is out, you go around, and even Ol’ Mr. Opportunity eventually came calling at my door again.

I tell my kids that nothing is a mistake if you learn from it… well, OK, nothing that doesn’t involve spilled blood, or broken bones, or the next door neighbor’s cat… but pretty much anything you live through you can learn from (except dangling participles). I lived through my youth, and I learned some valuable lessons. I hope my kids don’t have to learn the hard way like I did, but part of me knows they will – they’ll have to, if they’re going to be a bad example for my grandkids!