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Loida Casares Ruiz

Wife, Mother, Writer, Advertising Manager

Loida Casares Ruiz grew up in Northeast Houston. She graduated from the University of Houston with a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism and Minor in English. She received a Master of Arts in Communication in 2001. She works in advertising by day and is a mother, wife, and writer by night. She has al...

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Regrets

Loida Casares Ruiz

Cool date today! 08-08-08!

OK, now that I got that out of the way. A few weeks ago someone wrote about regrets and I commented that I don’t really live with many regrets because I feel like all of them are learning lessons.

Last weekend I was reminded of one of my regrets. I was at my 20 year reunion and we had a great time. There were two girls there who I had classes with my whole high school career. They are twins. I must admit that I was more friends with one of them than with the other, but I never had a bad exchange with the other twin either.

At the end of the school year when it came time to sign each other’s yearbooks I wrote something that I remember now wasn’t very nice. When I handed her book back I regretted it immediately. It was the kind of feeling that you get when you say something really mean in a fight and then regret it the moment you say it. The bad thing about this was that the other party didn’t even know she was in a fight with me.

I don’t remember mentioning the incident to anyone over the years, not even right after it happened. I just remember being ashamed of my actions.

The years went by and it passed through my memory as a fleeting thought. I think I remembered it around my 10 year reunion. I wondered if the twins would be there and was surprised when they didn’t show up. I wondered where they had settled all these years later.

Then came my twenty year reunion and I heard that they would be there. Once again I remembered my yearbook entry, but I pushed it out of my memory, hoping she wouldn’t bring it up or remember.

We had a grand time at the reunion and we actually spent a lot of time with the twins. They were a lot of fun and it was great to reminisce those days of old with them and our other classmates.

Well she did remember. At the end of the night she told the small group that went to their hotel about a mean yearbook entry from one of our classmates. Then she turned to me and said, “And Loida! She wrote the second meanest thing in my yearbook!”

I was outted right there in front of a handful of friends. They found out what a mean catty high school girl I had really been. After she read the other girl’s message to us, she handed me her yearbook and let me read what I had written. I didn’t remember the exact words, but I knew before I even read them that they had not been nice. I said something to the effect that I had “disliked her over the four years.”

“When I read that I said, ‘Aww, I thought Loida was my friend,’” she said.

I apologized and told her that it had been very “high school” of me. Her sister tried to reassure me that it wasn’t that bad and that she had just read it when they were in town for the reunion, twenty years later.  I knew that wasn’t true. I knew she read it when I originally wrote it and I still felt bad that I had done it.

Then I proceeded to break a glass of cranberry juice and vodka and to spill it all over the side of her bed. Classic end!

We went home that night promising to keep in touch and we all have this week, sending pictures and notes to one another. I know that life will probably take us away again and we probably won’t speak again until the time comes to plan either a 25 year or 30 year reunion. But that night I remembered a very important lesson about the importance of kindness and that I do have regrets.