Those Hours I'll Never Get Back. (6/26)

Regrets? I've had a few.

If life were fair (not that it ever is, but I can dream), I think we'd be able to call back the hours we waste on some of life's mundane tasks, and some of the bigger wastes of time we inevitably subject ourselves to over the years. Just as you can claim exemptions on your taxes for donations and work expenses, I think you should be able to cash in for wasted time at the end -- "Hey! It's not my time to die yet. I'm still owed a good ten years -- here's my itemized return." Here are many of the wastes of precious time I've endured:

Cleaning. What's the point? I'm a slob. I admit it. But sometimes, I'll decide I'm Not Going To Live Like That Anymore, and I'll blow an entire Saturday getting things back in order. I'll wash up the dishes that still bear dried-on remnants of last month's dinners. I'll take the dozens of empty beer bottles out to the recycle bin. I'll hang up my clothes. I'll shelve the books, throw away the magazines, and put away all the CDs and shoes and various detritus that makes navigating one's way through my apartment without tripping over something a feat comparable to summiting Everest. I'll run the vaccuum and clean the bathroom, and as I sit in my newly Martha Stewartized environment, I'll reflect on how very nice it is to be able to actually sit on the sofa that's been hiding under layers of coats, blankets, and junk mail for months, and I vow I'll never let things get so messy again.

Ha.

Clothes wrench themselves off hangers and leap out of drawers to land on the floor. My cats immediately rush to the litter box to practice for that Olympic gold medal they all want to get in the Long-Distance Litter Kick event. When they need a rest, they all convince each other it's spring and shed all over the carpet, or place bets on who can hurk up the biggest hairball on the newly-washed bathroom rug. Neighbors sneak by and stuff all the junk mail they don't want under my door. I come home from work and ask myself how it can be that I eat one meal at home a day, and often eat out at least once a week, and yet every last frigging pot, dish, fork, plate, and glass in the kitchen is dirty and piled in a very unstable tower formation in the sink. I ask myself when I invited all the local fraternities to come over and use my bathroom whenever they felt like it. And I ask myself why I bothered wasting a precious weekend day doing stuff that gets undone so damn fast. Can I have some of those Saturdays and Sundays back, please? I'll spend them more productively this time, I promise. Doesn't that seem reasonable?

Bad Relationships. There are bad relationships, and then there are Bad Relationships. The first kind don't end well, but you learn something valuable about yourself from them and sometimes, your ex becomes a friend, so they weren't a complete waste. But the second kind just don't seem real -- you shake yourself when they're over and say "Tell me I didn't just do that." You hate yourself afterwards. The sight of the other person makes you physically ill. Here are the people I think owe me back the months they stole from me:

• Mr. "I'm Gorgeous and I Know It." This guy, a college boyfriend, once told me that he could have any woman he wanted, and wasn't I lucky that he'd picked me. No shit. Cross my heart, swear to die. He used to tell me how gorgeous I'd be if I'd drop 20 pounds. He'd go out with me, dump me for a few months, and then come crying back to me swearing he'd made a mistake when some other woman would kick his arrogant ass to the curb. Why did I put up with it for so long? Because I was stupid? Because I'd gone to an all-girls school for eight years before I went to college, and had no idea how to deal with guys? Because he was really hot? More than a decade later, I still can't tell you what the hell I was thinking.

• Mr. Drug Dealer. You'd think the fact that he lived in a huge house, traveled all over the world, and habitually whipped out huge wads of $100 bills to pay for things despite having no job might have clued me in. You'd think the fact that the friend who set us up casually mentioned "I think he sells some drugs" might have clued me in. You'd be wrong. He fled the area, leaving no trace of himself save a phone call to the friend who'd set us up, only a few weeks after we'd started dating, so he doesn't owe me too much time. It's scary, the things I'd put up with when I was single and hated being dateless.

• Mr. "TV Is A Harsh Mistress." Another "It beats being single, right?" debacle. I met this guy at the office (big mistake -- everyone at the office was rooting for us and considered our dates their business) and dated him for a time, ignoring the inconvenient fact that I wasn't even remotely attracted to him. His entire conversational repertoire consisted of long, boring discussions about "Red Dwarf," a show I'd watched exactly once and didn't like. He didn't let my obvious lack of interest in the show or the conversation deter him from going into three-hour-long dissertations on the previous evening's half-hour episode. If he knew there was a world beyond cheesy English sci-fi shows running on PBS affiliates late at night, he gave no sign of it. I soon changed jobs, stopped answering his calls, and never looked back.

Bad "Entertainment." Collectively, the entertainment industry has stolen at least a decade from me, I believe. How have they done it? Let me count the ways:

• Lousy Movies: I'd like two-and-a-half hours back for each one of the following celluloid atrocities I sat through, please: "Cable Guy;" "Johnny Mnemonic;" "Point Break;" "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein;" "Lost Highway;" "Straight to Hell;" "Only Cowgirls Get The Blues;" "The Big Lebowski;" "Benny and Joon;" "Pretty Woman;" "Zandalee;" "Steel Magnolias;" every "Batman" movie; the sequels of any horror franchise featuring a deformed and/or mask-wearing villain who comes back to life despite being very obviously killed in the first film; any movie in which Michael Douglas reveals his bare ass; any film in which Juliette Lewis, Patricia Arquette, or Drew Barrymore play wacky, amoral free-spirits who like playing with guns; and "JFK." That's gotta get me a couple days back right there, and I haven't even scratched the surface.

• Bad Concerts: A lot of my friends are musicians, and knowing how much they pour their hearts out into performances, I feel a bit guilty about picking on their fellow artists. But dammit, some folks just need trashing. Billy Bragg, you owe me. I do not need to hear lectures about evil capitalist American pigs from some British wanker who's charging me $25 bucks a ticket plus TicketBastard charges, and who the hell knew how much more for T-shirts and albums at the venue. That's got to be the only show I've attended where I was actually cheering on the ubiquitous drunken asshole who was screaming "Play 'Freebird'!"

  I'd also like to have back the hours I spent sitting in traffic to see PJ Harvey open for Live at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Maryland. PJ, the person I'd come to see, was wonderful -- for the four songs I saw her do once we'd finally gotten into the venue and gotten our seats. Live just added new dimensions to the term "cornball". Are we all over this fascination with wannabe lounge lizard acts, now? Oh, good.

  I'd also like back the hours I wasted at a Cowboy Junkies concert several years ago. I love their music, but the night I saw them, they had the stage presence of vanilla pudding and the effect on the audience of an overdose of Tylenol PM. I've never seen that many people fall asleep at a show. It was so unbelievably boring that days later, when I was on the Metro describing the whole ordeal to some friends of mine, a guy sitting nearby turned around, told us he'd been at the same show, and said he'd fallen asleep, too. He sounded positively indignant at the memory. Bet he'd like those hours back, too.

• Bad TV: Another rich minefield of stolen hours from my ever-dwindling supply. In no particular order, here are the shows who stole time I'd like to reclaim: "The Bradys" (Remember that? It was supposed to be a serious drama about the grown-up Brady family. Need I say more?); "Martin;" ABC Stephen King miniseries "events" (especially "The Langoliers," a film about an airplane that ends up being overrun by flying killer meatballs with teeth); any show starring one or more of Aaron Spelling's ugly, untalented children; any post-"In Living Color" show featuring one or more members of the Wayans family, except for "Waynehead;" "Pinky, Elmyra and The Brain;" "Booker;" the half-hour of "Mad About You" I had to watch because my mom had it on; the half-hour of Rush Limbaugh's TV show I had to watch because my mom had it on; the 1999 Academy Awards broadcast; any TV miniseries remake of film classics that absolutely didn't need remaking ("In Cold Blood" with Eric Roberts taking over Robert Blake's role, anyone?); most "Saturday Night Live" shows in this decade; and any show featuring Geraldo Rivera in any capacity. Whew.

I also think I could collect receipts for miscellaneous petty wastes of time, such as the minutes I've lost watching stupid commercials, or the half-hours I've logged waiting on broken-down Metro trains this past spring, or all the minutes wasted waiting on hold, or in a Department of Motor Vehicles line, or behind the idiot in the supermarket who took 45 items through the 10-or-less express lane, or for a Web site that takes hours to load and ends up being complete shit. And I'd like to collect on the several years I squandered at my first dead-end job before I finally got the courage to jump.

And by the time I'd gotten back all the days I'd wasted, I'd probably be alive to see the next turn of the century.

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