Shoulda” — “Woulda” — “Coulda”

Words to wound yourself-esteem…

Photo by Bank Phrom on Unsplash

I should (ahem!) know — I do it to myself every friggin’ day.

“Shoulda” — Should have.

I should have been told I had “the highest IQ” in my class — told fifty years before I was finally told by a former classmate. I thought she was an old friend. So why did she tell me this now?

It virtually negated my entire life — being an RN, retiring as a VP of Nursing, having my wonderful daughter — all of that might never had happened if I’d known.

And then I think, if Susie knew, did my parents?

And if my parents knew and still told me not to apply to any colleges, were they doing that for their own benefit and not mine?

I remember a remark from my nurse’s residence housemother who was miffed at me for some reason (I was not conventional), “I can get you out of here as quickly as you got in.” So I got into the nursing school quickly? Why? I now wonder. Was it that secretive IQ?

So many questions and no one left to answer them.

Not even Mrs. Stanton, my high school English teacher, who was concerned that I was going to a school of nursing and not a college. Her remark to me still echoes down through the last fifty-odd years is “You should go to college. You should be…