Whiteout

     My girlfriend sent me a text the other day and asked if I had whiteout. I didn't, but I started to think about my life and the mistakes I've made. I secretly envisioned myself owning a life sized bottle of whiteout to cover up the mistakes I regretted making. Momentarily I thought about the embarrassing things and how I could erase that one time I was running about with my cousins in the dark, spying on the neighbors, doing whatever they did because they were boys and I was a girl proving I could do anything they could, but then I fell into Pinewski's sewer (their neighbor). Yes....the sewer....right up to my chest and my feet were suctioned into a foot of sludge. The boys wouldn't even pull me out because I smelled like shit and none of them wanted to grab my hand. I lost a shoe in the muck.  By the time I crawled out, my brother and my cousins hightailed it away from me, tripping, snorting and laughing all the way. I wondered what affect the whiteout would have if I just swiped over that tiny little incident and made it disappear? Would I still have grown into the woman I am today who is really able to laugh at myself, while not taking myself too seriously. Then I thought, "What if every time we used whiteout, a piece of our character disappeared? Would it be worth it, just to save ourselves some embarrassment?" How small would you be if you never lived, took chances, had regrets or made mistakes? Suddenly my life sized bottle of whiteout didn't seem like such a good idea. Instead, I decided not to view my mistakes as unfortunate events, but rather as character builders.