Learning from mistakes a life-changing experience for many

Never having written a book, I'm jealous that Charles Grodin produced one by asking others to write it for him. That alone shows he is clever.

"If I Only Knew Then ... Learning from Our Mistakes" is a series of short essays by 80 people Grodin knows. The writers include celebrities, performers, writers, business types and a few politicians. Most are household names. Grodin asked them to write about mistakes they'd made and then end their essay by explaining "What I Learned."

From ribald to heart wrenching, people shared experiences in their own voices, even though they didn't always look good in the telling.

One of the shortest offerings was from dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov, who admitted during his career he seldom "extended my arm to someone I felt needed help." He was brutally honest, but certainly showed his selfish side.

Actress Sally Kellerman, (Hot Lips in the movie "M*A*S*H") went into great detail about her mad crush on Marlon Brando when she was a pudgy virgin and said her mistake was not sleeping with him when she had the chance. "What I learned: I was a putz. If a similar opportunity affords myself in the next life -- I'm there," Kellerman wrote.

Grodin's own segment was well written and moving. He described his unwillingness to help his dad in his sewing supply store because he wanted to use his after-school free time for other things. His father died when he was 52 and Grodin was 18. "If I had it to do over, I would have been there at the store with him as much as he wanted," Grodin wrote.

Of course, he can't do it over. And he learned, "Sometimes, getting your way isn't really worth it."

Author Gil Schwartz wrote well about his mistake of not being present when his dad died, a mistake he rectified when his mom died.

My mother and I have been reading the 2007 book together and discussing our own mistakes. Both of us thought about it a few days before settling on just one.

She said her mistake was to continue working when I was young, so our small family would have extra money. "We would have had more fun if I hadn't worked," she said. But since I didn't end up in prison, we decided her mistake might not be so horrible.

My own mistake was a fashion mistake. Sounds trivial, but it was life changing.

When I graduated from college, my first job was at the Christian Science Monitor in Boston. Coming from Seattle, I dressed casually in my same old college clothes -- smock tops and corduroy jeans. Since it was the '70s, I didn't always wear a bra and didn't think it was that noticeable.

Apparently it was.

Twice, my bid to move up from a news clerk job to a reporter-trainee job was nixed by the Monitor's prim and proper English editor. The second time I was told he'd said, "If she wants the job so much, maybe she should wear a bra."

Furious, I started looking for a new job and ended up working for what is today Stephens Media, first in Fort Smith, Ark., then in Las Vegas.

What I Learned: Dress appropriately for the company. The Monitor was a newspaper under the umbrella of a church. Those who dressed appropriately advanced.

The follow-up question my mom and I are now discussing: Would our lives have been happier if my mom hadn't worked? It's a question every working mom asks at one time or another, especially if working is optional. We could have lived on my father's salary as a Boeing engineer. The Morrison cats wouldn't have been forced to eat generic.

Would I have been happier if I'd stayed with the Monitor and worked up the ladder? After all, I'm happy in Las Vegas with one of the best jobs at the newspaper.

We made our choices and we'll never know what might have been. But it's been an enlightening discussion -- definitely something to think about.

Unless you're like Paul Newman, who wrote he never learned anything from his mistakes, he just kept making the same ones over and over and over.

Jane Ann Morrison's column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday. E-mail her at Jane@reviewjournal.com or call (702) 383-0275. She also blogs at lvrj.com/blogs/morrison/.