Have you ever ....

...done something so blitheringly stupid you wish you could go back in time and take it back?

We've all had moments like that -- I'm sure buried in everyone's memory or subconscious there's more than one moment like that. I can safely say I have had several, but there has been one nagging at me for a long time now. So here goes ... maybe this will help get it out of my system.

I couldn't tell you the year, but if I had to guess, it would be 1984 and I was the tender age of 19. For those who knew me back then, I was a fairly heavy drinker, having discovered alcohol five years earlier at a Knicks game of all things. I drank for much the same reasons I overate -- fear, loneliness, rejection, all the bad juju.

Anyway, I was in my second freshman year at Queens College, and I was at a party, probably for something called Freshman Weekend -- a Bacchanalian orgy of booze and drugs held at a farm in upstate New York. Now, this party wasn't the Freshman Weekend bash. There also was a pre-Freshman Weekend and a post-Freshman Weekend party.

You know, teenage livers can absorb a lot of punishment. I'm living proof.

These parties were held at a house on Reeves Avenue, just off campus. I have no clue how much I drank that night ... I know it probably started with at least 12 beers. Minimum. It was a Friday night, and I was working on drinking myself into a stupor.

Later on in the night, and I don't exactly remember how this happened, but someone I was very attracted to -- I'll call her "Nicole" (disclaimer: not her real name!) -- ended up driving me home.

While in her car, I had an open bottle of Tango. This is something no one should ever drink under any circumstances. Basically, take Tang breakfast drink and mix it with cheap vodka and there you have it -- total retail value, maybe $1.69 tops.

After somehow giving her directions where to drop me off, I exited Nicole's car, bottle still firmly in hand. Stupid as it sounds now that I am almost 41, I had the biggest crush on "Nicole" since the high school days. Months earlier, I shared my first slow dance with her in a darkened room during a party, but didn't kiss her then because I was coming down with a cold and didn't want her to get sick.

A peck on her forehead was all I gave her.

Anyway, back to her dropping me off. So many things in my drunk state that I wanted to say. So many things I didn't want to hear. So much frustration in not being able to say what I wanted, or to be taken seriously. The bottle was smashed on the ground and was left out there when I woke up the next day. No one in my family said anything, but I heard over time that others in my neighborhood were eating that all up.

Many years later, I met up with "Nicole" again when she came to NYC to visit and over coffee, I told her how embarrassed I was over that episode and apologized. She said she did not remember it, much like I did not remember going to a "Battle of the Bands" event with her and some other college friends back then.

Twenty-two years later, I still wonder what if. Not a healthy way to think, sure. I guess with this blog entry, the best thing to say is sometimes go with your gut. Say the things you want, need to say instead of holding back. You may not like the answer you get, but, you may also save yourself time asking "What if?"

Still out there ...

Well, I survived a weekend in NYC and a birthday dinner at Peter Luger's. I think that will be the last time I try to help put together a family thing -- behind a sister, nearly blind from several eye operations, feeling her way around the table and almost shouting "What's this? What's this?" while touching everything on the table (including a shrimp from the shrimp cocktail) to a mother who felt the need to tip the waiter after we already gave him $75 ... I'm tired of being embarrassed.

Nothing much else is going on ... feeling a little blue. I was supposed to meet someone on Wednesday through Yahoo personals, but she backed out the night before, saying she "had to clean her apartment." Why not just say she had to wash her hair, or tend to a parent undergoing back surgery (Yeah, I've gotten those in the past.) ...it's enough to give someone a complex.

Oh, I forgot, I had one of those.

Let's see, what else ... Lay and Skilling found guilty in the Enron case -- not a shock there, they were tried and convicted when the company went under ... Reggie Bush will wear No. 25 for the Saints instead of No. 5 -- not a shock there either; the NFL isn't called the No Fun League for nothing ... the Royals have lost 13 in a row -- they may not be as bad as the Cubs though.

I'll try to keep up with this a little better. I'm just going through one of those times now.

Request denied

So after taunting the U.S and victims of Sept. 11 during his trial, Zacharias Moussaoui NOW thinks he can get a fair trial in the United States because he was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole rather than be executed -- and ostensibly be a martyr to enjoy whatever fruits of Paradise have been implanted in his mind by those he followed.

According to Michael J. Sniffen of The Associated Press, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema quickly rejected a motion the confessed al-Qaida conspirator filed Monday to withdraw his guilty plea and get a new trial. He was sentenced Wednesday by Brinkema to six life sentences to run as two consecutive life terms.

"I had thought I would be sentenced to death based on the emotions and anger toward me for the deaths on Sept. 11," Moussaoui explained in an affidavit. "But after reviewing the jury verdict and reading how the jurors set aside their emotions and disgust for me and focused on the law and the evidence ... I now see that it is possible that I can receive a fair trial even with Americans as jurors."

I wonder what changed his mind. Could it be that he is in a federal supermax prison in Colorado where he will be in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, every day until he dies? He gave all indications that he would not be broken, remaining defiant to all in his way. Five days the country's most stringent prison did it.

So all this leads to these questions: Is he mentally ill and is it right to imprison the mentally ill under these circumstances? I believe Zacharias Moussaoui is bi-polar, going from the highest of the highs -- saying that he won and America lost after sentencing -- to the lowest of lows in trying to get a new chance for freedom.

Is it right to imprison him? Yes. But I also think he needs to get help, and the humane thing to do is give it to him. No judge now or ever is going to let him back in the free world, and that is the right call.

Under construction

I really have been slacking of late. Workouts have been dwindling to two times a week instead of four, and work has just been taking a toll thanks to three people who cannot write well.

One bright note is I will be going home to NYC in a couple weeks for my father's 80th birthday, and the obligatory trip to Peter Luger's on Long Island.

And again I missed predictions on the NHL semifinals. All that needs to be said is with three straight playoff shutouts for the first time in 60 years, Anaheim's Ilya Bryzgalov is going to be in for quite a payday.