Lost Opportunities

by Rob Watson

I think I may have an inferiority complex.  If not, then I feel most other people are superior to me in many ways.  I spent time pondering this tonight as I lay awake in bed.  Such contemplations often lead me to recall opportunities in which I failed to take advantage.

The two things I have sought most and failed to find most often have been love and money.  Lest you be concerned, Wife is as good a love as any man may hope to find, and as long as our government remains solvent, we will have enough money to survive, perhaps even taste a bit of the honey in this life.

In my favor I have to say I have two advantages that might have been used to take advantage of opportunities.  The first I learned at my mother's knee.  Polite treatment of others.  This skill was further refined at the movies by observing the hero cowboys of the Saturday movies of the 1950's...Yes Ma'am, no sir...everybody deserved respect until proven otherwise.  (Mama also taught me to cook, wash my own clothes, and keep things neat...though this latter is frequently left unpracticed.)

My other asset is the ability to understand science.  I first developed this skill in the library of my elementary school.  Later in life I learned to enjoy reading fiction and history.  In these early years science was the subject that interested me.  There in the cradle of education I sought out science books.  (I am sure I was forced to go to the library, outside was where I longed to be.)  As early as the third grade I found and read the fourth, fifth and sixth grade science books.

One day, business was slow at my parents business.  During such times I would sit on a bumper guard out front and look at rocks I picked up from the gravel parking lot.  On this day I found a rock that was the shape of two pyramids base to base.  It was clear in color and about 1/2 inch on each side.  After carefully examining it I threw it out to the middle of the lot and forgot about it until the third year of college.  There in geology class I learned that rock was most likely a diamond  (Flaws not withstanding, my diamond might have been cut into a round brilliant cut about 1/2 inch across and weigh 10 carats or so.  Coincident with my college discovery was the discovery that the gravel pit where my rock originated contained diamonds.  (For those who like irony, the roads of one of the poorest states in the Union are paved with diamonds.) Going back to recover my diamond was not an option as my parents had, by then, paved over the gravel parking lot.

A few years after this I took a few thousand dollars to a stock broker, and by moves based entirely on good fortune, parlayed them into $106,000.  I was able to pick the turn in the stockmarket correct to the hour.  There, good fortune deserted me and learning began.  I lost nearly all of the gains in a few weeks time.  Unfortunately the lesson learned was not applied until I had confirmed my hard found knowledge after repeating the process a second time quite a few years later.  If I make another pile of money, I hope to have the wisdom to hold on to it.  There is a huge uptick in the markets these days....

Opportunities in love are not so easily defined... but I got a treasure there: Wife!!