Anniversary of Regrets

Rhoda and friends. Anita, in the background,
somehow managed to scrounge up the
requisite number of teapots and keep up
with the drink orders - no mean feat!

Rhoda phoned me last weekend and asked if she and a group of her friends could meet at the TH for desserts on Sunday night. What's the name of the group, I asked.

"Oh, it's the Regrets - it's our fiftieth anniversary. There'll be about eight to twelve of us."

All week long I speculated on what a dozen people could regret for FIFTY YEARS: Was it not being married? (Was it being married?!) Had they all experienced hopes dashed half a century ago? Was it the same hope? Whatever it was, it had happened before I was even born.

The song Miss Otis Regrets She's Unable to Lunch Today kept buzzing in my head, wasplike in its persistence.

On Saturday evening, Rhoda called: "There are going to be 18 of us now."

More regrets? I was starting to feel alarm at the thought of all that negative energy permeating the TH on a Sunday night. "Please tell them not to come early," I begged Rhoda.



Thanks for the heads-up on the
rowdies in the group, Neville!

 And promptly at 8 p.m. on Sunday night the front door opened wide and in poured 18 ... 19 ... 22 ... 24 people. We had set up for 18 people, but everyone cheerfully found chairs, even the piano bench, and perched shoulder to shoulder around the tables.

They were jovial, pleasant, delighted to be in each other's company. The place buzzed with warmth and reminiscences.

None of them seemed particularly regretful.

"These desserts were wonderful -
Did you make any of them?!"

Then one of them said in passing to me, "Can you believe we all graduated together in 1961? This is our fiftieth Re-Grad celebration weekend!"

~~~Re-GRAD?!~~~

Miss Otis quickly whisked herself out of circulation again, and I thought I could hear Ol' Blue Eyes murmuring in my ear:

Regrets, I've had a few - but then again, too few to mention ...

Congratulations, Rhoda and friends. Let's do it again in ten years!