If I’d known then what I know now…
With the benefit of hindsight, three writers look back on their important milestones – and how things might have turned out very differently…
Writer and actor Helen Lederer felt like an outsider as a child, yet her gift for comedy was already in evidence…
I wish I’d known that being fat, wheezy and the wearer of a hairband aged 10 would turn out to be a plus in my later years. at the time it was a burden – especially when I found myself being nicknamed “waggle bottom” in PE – and this was by my best friend. but looking back, I can see that having the “outsider” complex has helped in my writing… and anyway, who likes thin?
Most comedians will be only too happy to assure you that they’re not normal – why else choose to do such a strange job? on the other hand, what is normal?
My worried parents took me for “tests”, where the results came back saying I was
“capable but a bit of a dreamer”.
I wish I could have told my whole family to “chillax” and focus on the positives. this shouldn’t have rendered me odd – rather that I was imaginative with a penchant for fun. surely these are gifts, I would have told myself. I wish I could have been more relaxed in the joy of individuality, instead of agonising over finding the same skirt as everyone else in the sixth form. I wish I hadn’t felt so inadequate when one girl boasted of her sexual capabilities, when I’d only got to the snogging phase.
I wish I’d viewed my strange imagination as a gift instead of a curse, and that my flights of fancy and jokes could be seen as well-intentioned and fun, instead of foolish acts that justified a telling off or worse, rejection.
looking back, I now accept that
I was entirely responsible for the stink-bomb attack in the first year
‘I wish I’d viewed my strange imagination as a gift, not a curse’ ‘being yourself is so important – but finding that self-belief takes practice’
of senior school. I wish I could have realised that I hadn’t committed a heinous act and that I was just curious to see what would happen if three stink bombs broke in a confined space. and that the consequent tellings off I received for the rest of my school career would not mark me out as someone who needed to be deported. I was just a 12 year old who liked joke shops.
and I wish I could have been kinder to myself to avoid a constant feeling of rejection that haunted my teens. I’m thinking of one time, aged 15, when I asked a boy to write to me via letters left in a tin in our local woods. We began a romantic correspondence – until my identity became known and then he rather cruelly told me to get lost. looking back, as devastating as it was, this rejection prepared me for a life where rejections are inevitable. I should thank him really…
being yourself is really the most important act any of us can do – and finding self-belief takes practice. I should have had more patience.
I wish I could have told myself that friendships can be enjoyed with many people at the same time. they don’t have to be divisive and scary.
I now know how short life is and that wasting any of it on regrets is pointless. We can learn from what we do. For instance, I won’t roll down the hill in a car with the handbrake off and the gearstick stuck in neutral again – ever – because I did it once and nearly drove over a cliff…