WHAT WE DID AND DIDN'T DO

Easy sometimes to beat ourselves up for what we did not do in life.

Folks, quite honestly, I’m a little bored with politics right now. The Big Beautiful Bill, illegal grumppumpers, insanely stupid DemoKKKrats, and the White House version of the Dating Game with President Trump and Elon Musk. So take this column personally. Think about the things you didn’t do in life that you regret missing . . . but think of all the things you did do and can do. . . a different take.

I never learned to roller skate . . .

But I did go down a barge on the Danube River debating Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman about banking as a crowd gathered. (I insist I won).

Outside of the tennis team, where I was dead last, I never played any organized sport—-football, baseball, hockey, basketball.

But with my wife, I taught high-impact aerobics for five or six years, and got so good that I took a master class in funky “Street Dance” in Los Angeles with Joey Luna, who had his own ESPN show at the time . . . and I kept up!

I was never in the military—-4-F during Veetnam—-but I was given a special guided tour of Camp Lejuene by the Marines, wrote the program history of the USAF X-30 secret research aircraft, wrote the program history of the US Navy’s Trident Submarine program, and spoke to participants of the TOP GUN/WILLIAM TELL event in Savannah two years ago where I met Col. James Harvey, the 100-year-old Tuskeegee Airman, whose unit won the TOP GUN award in 1948.

I never visited Asia, India, Russia, Latin America, Japan, or Australia, and my one trip to Germany wasn’t that satisfying . . .

But I did play in a band where we played at Norm Silver’s Mustache Club in Montreal, Canada, and during breaks we’d walk across the street to the Forum and get in free to watch parts of the Canadiens’ games. We also almost got arrested crossing back over the border from Me-hee-co cuz, you know, we were such upstanding looking guys.

I auditioned for the Arizona State University marching band and was humiliated in my first drum lesson by the drum corps leader, who showed me how pathetic I was compared to the rest of their drummers.

But I did learn to play a set well enough that my band opened for Steppenwolf, the James Gang, Savoy Brown, and the Who sat through our set at the Troubadour, with a very drunk Pete Townsend slapping me on the back saying “Good show, wot?”

I cannot nail two boards together, am hopeless at handiwork, and don’t know mechanical stuff enough to tighten screws without direction.

But in college I got to where I could read five or six entire books in a single night, and somehow I ended up befriending Jim “Mattress Mack” Macingvale, the furniture king who won the most money on a single bet ever in American history: $75 million on the Astros to win the World Series. Mack had me design his atrium historical project for his Gallery Furniture stores.

I had rotten grades at Arizona State (not exactly Yale). . .

But somehow I got a PhD with distinction, and my dissertation was one of the best three dissertations in economic history in the nation, as awarded by the American Economic Association on banking in the American South. (I only took one business class in college, and never took an economics, banking, or finance class).

I never took a film class (up to that time) and had never raised a dime of money for any project.

But in 2009, in less than six months, somehow I raised $350,000 and produced a documentary film called “Rockin’ the Wall” that somehow got on PBS, AXS, and Newsmax.

I was never politically active, though I voted. But somehow I ended up in the Oval Office with President George W. Bush and on President Trump’s 1776 Commission and became an advisor to Steve Bannon when he was Trump’s campaign manager in 2016.

I never cared for country music. . .

But I met Clint Black, we became friends, and now I’d never miss a concert.

I never knew anything about real estate. . .

But in 2008, after I appeared on “Fox and Friends,” Harlan Crow of Trammell-Crow holdings called me and said “I want to give a copy of your book to every legislator in America.” He bought 7, 680 hardcover copies and I spent three full days signing autographs on them as fast as I could.

Finally, I never taught a Sunday School class . . .

But I baptized both my wife and my best friend, him in my backyard pool.

Life can be about the road not taken, but sometimes we have to look at the blessings we got from the roads we did travel.

(All this and more is in my bio, The Rhythm of History):

Remember we have a great Plymouth/Salem/Lexington/Concord/Boston tour coming up in Aug/Sept. Check it out here:

Larry Schweikart (@LarrySchwe94560)

Rock drummer, Film maker,NYTimes #1 bestselling author

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