A Big Mistake

It’s been a bad week for Denis Shapovalov. After a run of missed shots during the Davis Cup, he smashed a ball into the crowd to vent his frustration, convinced that his failure to win a set was down to bad luck rather than bad aim, and promptly hit the umpire in the eye. Some might say that this would actually demonstrate excellent aim, since the crowd was massive and the umpire’s eye somewhat less so (at least it was before Shapovalov’s temper tantrum), but apparently it was entirely unintentional. Shapovalov was devastated, dispirited and disqualified. But at least he can say it was one in the eye for tennis.

We’ve all experienced it. That moment when you do something so disastrous, so gut-wrenchingly awful, that for a split second you would give anything, do anything, just to take it back. You can’t of course. It’s one of the defining moments of growing up when you realise there are some things you just can’t undo. You can do nothing except roll with it and take the consequences. It is not a good feeling. Not everything is awesome about growing up.

The first time it happened to me was playing marbles. I wasn’t very good at marbles. However, I had been practising and, more importantly, I had saved up and bought myself a kingy. It had been quite expensive.

For those not familiar with the game of marbles, the rules are quite simple. You both attempt to hit the other person's marble with your own, and the first person to hit the other's marble gets to keep them both. Different types of marble, however, required different numbers of hits to win and a kingy, being the largest marble, required four shots to win, while I would only need to hit my opponents ordinary marble once to take it home.

The first time he hit my marble I was disappointed but not worried. I had three shots to go, and I would undoubtedly finish him off before I had anything to worry about.

The second time he hit my marble, I began to sweat. Little beads, at the back of my neck, leaving marks on my white collar.

On the third hit, I was regretting everything: my decision to play marbles, my decision to risk my kingy, my decision even to come into school that day.

It didn’t really believe my mistake until the fourth hit, though. When he took my marble, I stared in disbelief. My stomach felt like he had slammed a fist into, while I simultaneously felt a hundred degrees and ten below zero. Then I insisted we’d only been playing a friendly. That it didn’t count, because he hadn’t hit it right. Or that I’d misunderstood the rules. Looking back it’s all quite embarrassing. I think I may have cried a little and attempted to wrestle my vanquished marble from his hand.

Of course, in many ways I was lucky. As an introduction to the consequences of a mistake you can’t take back, this was a safe and mild as it gets. My only loss was a few week’s of pocket money, and given that I’d already spent it on a small ball of glass, it was money I could probably afford to lose.

Since then, I’ve had my fair share of gut-punches. You know how it goes. The moment you say out loud the words that sounded less hurtful in your head, the moment you invest in a foolproof scheme that simply needed more fools, the moment you slam the brakes but the car continues to slide.

I’m still here. No mistake but your last one is a mistake you cannot walk away from, and any mistake you can walk away from is one from which you can learn.

The important thing in life is how we deal with our errors. We can, like Shapovalov, walk into the referee’s office and apologise, knowing that nothing he can say will change that fact that he has disqualified himself from the Davis Cup, or we can rant and rail against the injustice, tell everyone that it’s not our fault, and insist, against all likelihood of success, that the world admit it's wrong and give us our marbles back.