I have always been my main problem

When I was in the Navy, just a few weeks after leaving boot camp, I was offered an opportunity to go "officer". That is, the instructor at the Basic Electricity and Electronics Preparatory school (affectionately known as "BEEP" school) asked me if I wanted to get into an officer training program. I would be put through college, I would likely be taught to fly, and I would become an officer.

I turned it down.

People ask me why I would turn down a free education. The answer was simpler back then. To me, it was a no brainer. If I qualified for flight training, I would be trained to fly fighter jets. A lot of people see that as glamorous and exciting. And it is. But there's a catch. You have to land the things on a moving target of limited size in all kinds of weather. I would also have at least 4 additional years to serve.

I was 19... 4 years seemed a lifetime to me.

I also was not enamored of a college education. Why that is, I don't know. My parents never expected any of us to go to college so they didn't plan for it or push it. Before entering the Navy, I did take a few courses at a community college in Brevard County (near Cape Kennedy) and wasn't impressed. I realize that a community college is nothing like a "real" one. But I got a taste of the minimum requirement and decided I had had enough of school. The Navy program would have set standards that I was not interested in meeting.

There was another reason. I was (and remain) uncomfortable with ritual. The officers of the Navy (and all other branches) have rituals, formal dinners, meetings, and standards of behavior that must be adhered to. I hate rituals of all kinds. I deplore formal dinners. And meetings bore me.

Now, some 46 years later, I can comfortably regret that decision. It's over, it's done. I cannot go back in time and do it over. If I could, I would have made the other choice, I would have applied.

But it haunts me. I suppose we all have decisions we regret. I suppose it's what shapes us.