There are times where we all say or do things that we regret. Things that are done in haste and are impossible to retreat from. Those moments when we just say to ourselves, "Why did I do that? Why? Why? Am I stupid or something?"

The other day, our secretary had her twenty year old daughter fill in for her at the front desk. I had just come in from an hour long negotiation and I was tired. Our secretary's daughter looked up at me and said, "What is your problem?"

In turn, I looked her straight in the eye and having never spoken to her before in my life, I said, "Fuck you. Go to hell."

Needless to say she was shocked. Then she smiled and said, "Well. That was about the last thing I expected you to say."

I don't regret that incident, and I'm not certain why I'm discussing it given my topic of conversation. I just thought it was an amusing aside. It was one of the moments that with the wrong person and the wrong context might have gotten me fired. Context is everything though, and from the tone of her voice and what I saw when I made that eye contact, I knew what I could get away with.

On the other hand, today as part of my diet I ate lunch at Burger King and had one of those 1/3 pound Angus Burgers with melted cheese and bacon. I don't regret that either because, other than a 50 cent bag of chips and a brownie, it was the only damned thing I ate today. That burger was great. It was greasy and slimey and had little black stuff from the grill all over it.

However, after getting my wonderfully delicious, melt-in-my-mouth, and totally bad for me burger, I noticed this guy in the restaurant with a cigarette in his hand. There's a no smoking in restaurants ordinance where I live, and the thought of having my happy taste bud moment interrupted by the smell of this jerk smoking a cigarette in a restaurant when he clearly knew that he wasn't supposed to just made my temper flare. So I lashed out at him and said, "Hey! There's no smoking in here!"

He said, "I'm not smoking! It's not lit!"

It was only then that I realized that in fact he was correct. There was no smoke coming out of the cigarette, and it became clear that this was an employee on break who had just pulled out the cigarette so that he could contemplate the moment when he finished his soda and could step outside.

God, I felt stupid! Why couldn't I have just kept my big mouth shut? If I had just thought for another .5 seconds the whole situation would have been obvious. But instead, I had to open my freckin trap and say something totally idiotic. I mumbled something like, "Oh. Okay. You're right." And then I spent the rest of my meal cringing. I saw this guy go outside to smoke his cigarette and I thought, "Jesus, after he finishes that he's going to come up to me and tell me what an idiot I am." Fortunately, he went back to work and that was the end of that.

But that's the only thing I've said or done that I've really, really regretted so far this week. Which is pretty good for me. The incident where I picked up the dead mouse on the sidewalk in front of my client, and being twenty minutes late for court on Monday morning really weren't as big a deal as the Burger King thing, and I can't think of anything else I've done that I would remotely wish to retract.