Day 36: Music From Another Room

January 31, 2010

Everyone has regrets. Whether it is relating to something that you have said to another person or it is something you failed to act on, everyone has at least one thing in their life that they would like to change. Except for Taylor Swift possibly, she's only 20 and things have seemed to go pretty good for her so far. Anyways though, I do have a few of my own. Today though, I am only going to talk about one. It involves the only regret I truly have involving a girl.

I'll start it off by saying I have not thought about this story for some time now. In fact, it wasn't until recently that I even remembered it. It begins with me having a Netflix account. I've had it for around ten months now and I have to be one of there favorite customers. I say this because it usually takes me a good month to watch and return a movie. Over the summer I had the same movie for around ten weeks, so needless to say I do not use my account wisely. However, I stay with them because they are the easiest thing around to find movies that I have always wanted to see. That is where this all comes into play.

As I have previously mentioned, I love the movie '10 Things I Hate About You'. I don't know why I love this movie so much, but I do. Since I do watch this movie quite often, it shows up on my account page that I have been viewing it. When this happens, they always try to recommend other movies that are similar to the film that you have just watched. So a couple of weeks ago I was on the site and I was looking through recommendations and I came across a film that I had not thought of in a long time. The name of the movie is "Music from another room", starring Jude Law and Gretchen Mol. It is a little indie romantic comedy that was released in 1998 to very little fanfare. I had never scene this movie but always wanted to, not because it sounded interesting to me but because of a girl that I once liked.

Back in the fall of 1999, my first semester of college, I had a speech class that I very much liked. It was a great class, with a great teacher that I still remember fondly to this day. Past that though, there was nothing particularly special about this class. It was my first night class, which I suppose is something, but nothing out of the ordinary. The one thing that has kept it in my mind all these years though, is this girl I sat next to. I do not remember her name or even what she looked like, but I remember her being very pretty. She was 18 years old, same as I was. I remember this because we all had to give speeches on the year we were born in and both of ours were on the year 1980. I also remember that she was going into mortuary science and her father ran one of the restaurants on the campus that we were attending.

I am actually surprised that I remember all of that about her and not her name. For some reason names always allude me. Anyways, we talked once in a while and always got along great. I remember thinking to myself that I should ask this girl out, but for some reason I never did. Actually, the reason I did not do this is because I was into another girl at the time, one that naturally never lead to anything. So as the semester rolled on, I went on with thoughts of asking her out but never wanted to in case the situation with the other girl turned around.

Now you may be wondering (or the more likely scenario is one that involves you losing interest at this point), where does this movie come into play? Well, the movie comes into play because in one of her speeches she mentioned that it was her favorite movie of all time. I remember asking her about this movie, as I had never heard of it. She told me about it and I remember thinking that it was a strange movie to be someones all time favorite. Regardless of the reason though, it was her favorite film and I have always kept that in the back of my mind. Which is what brings me to today.

This morning after watching Roger Federer win his sixteenth Grand Slam final championship, I watched the movie 'Music from another room'. It was a charming little romantic comedy, not favorite all time movie material, but very likable nonetheless. Which finally brings me to the thing that I regret. The day of our last class together I was in a really lousy mood. I believe I had come to yet another realization that I was never going to get with the girl that I had been pinning over. So when I got to class that night I just wanted to get in and get out as quickly as possible. I remember regret girl looking very good that night (as she always did), but me acting like captain poopy pants. She tried to talk to me a couple of times during class and me being indifferent to the situation.

I also remember getting that vibe from her that night, you know the one you get before some asks you out. It's that nervous excited feeling that you get in your stomach. It's a really great feeling and that was what I was getting from her that night. As the class came to a close I vividly remember us walking out together. As we began to walk down the school hallway though, I started to walk faster then her, as if trying to get away from her before she could ask me something. I wanted to sulk that night by myself and a small part of me wanted another person to feel the same way that I did. So as I walked down the hallway towards the exit door I heard her say something to me, I don't know what it was but I knew she was talking to me. Though I of course heard her say this I chose to pretend that I didn't hear her and kept on walking. I remember feeling really bad about this and when I reached the exit, I looked back and saw her standing in the hallway, turning around and walking the other way.

I realize that none of this is ground breaking stuff, but I have always regretting not turning around to see what she had said. I wonder if she was going to ask me out or if she was just wishing me a happy Christmas. Either way, I really wish that I could go back and see what she had to say. I also wish that I had seen the movie back then as well. Maybe, just maybe it would have given us one more thing to talk about. It's moments like this that I spend far too much time thinking about. It is a regret though, the only true regret I have involving a girl that I may have liked. I've never told this story to anyone (technically I still haven't I suppose) and now it's out there.

I still wonder if anything would have ever come from me turning around that night. I suppose wonder is all that it will ever be. Until next time, have a good night.