COLUMN: Living life sans regret

From Ariel Horn's, "Candy from a Stranger," Fall '00 From Ariel Horn's, "Candy from a Stranger," Fall '00Little French school children just outside of Paris are having lots and lots of regretless sex. Ooh la la! Picture little French schoolboys carrying satchels and riding their little bicyclettes to school. On the streets, jolly Frenchmen resembling Maurice -- Belle's father from Beauty and the Beast -- sell baguettes and croissants. Perhaps a devastatingly sexy waiter named Jean-Luc seductively smokes a cigarette as he leans against the wall of a cafZ with a small dog named Fifi at his side. Cheese, dogs that yap their high-pitched barks in French and men named Jean-Luc. As they say in France, "c'est la vie." Not everyone, however, is happy to eat cheese and croissants all day while ogling French men and their little malnourished dogs. Middle-school aged French children, in particular, have found recreational activities other than school trips to vineyards, study sessions for the Baccalaureate and crushes on men like Jean-Luc. According to a recent article in The New York Times, little French school children aren't wasting their time on Britney Spears, glitter lipstick or trendy clothes like those silly American kids. Instead, girls like "Monique" and "Colette" are getting busy with the 13-year-old equivalents of Jean-Luc, having unprotected sex without the consequences of pregnancy. As of last month, nurses in French middle schools and high schools were given the authority and the means to distribute "morning-after" pills without parental permission or knowledge, as easily and quickly as they hand out the French equivalent of Band-Aids. By contrast, in my high school, I couldn't even get an aspirin without calling home first. So, when a girl says "non" and changes her mind to "oui" at the last moment, there's a solution. Apparently, little girls named "Monique" and "Colette" aren't willing to settle for a tissue while they cry to Madame Nurse about mistakes they've made. It ain't about Band-Aids. These girls want the hard-core stuff. And who could blame them? Minus the potential to contract an STD, unprotected sex without the biological repercussion of pregnancy is like a dream come true. It's taking the Pill without having to actually take the Pill. It's the fun without the fumbling for a condom. It's the garlic bread without the bad breath. In France, they're livin' the high life -- sex, cheese and little dogs named Fifi for all! Or are they? Rather than biting the bullet, French girls are biting the pill. Their biological regrets, as well as the male party's, are solved when they don't have to worry about carrying Jean-Luc's baby (though STDs may still be an issue). But is the morning after really just about biological anxiety? The morning after, whether in sex or other regrettable day-to-day activities, involves much more than what a pill has the capacity to cure. Extend the discussion beyond sex and France. Have you ever walked away from a fight with a friend thinking, "If only I could take back what I said, everything would be OK?" Have you ever taken an exam and thought, "I should've studied more for that rather than eating Ritz crackers and artificial spray cheese playing DreamCast all night long?" Have you ever wanted to tell a friend or family member something really important and then given up because you were scared of their reaction? In other words, have you ever wanted so desperately to take something back in your past that you would do anything to change it? When we think about our lives in retrospect, we realize that our hindsight is always a clear 20/20 and that our foresight generally leaves something to be desired. With the distribution of morning-after pills in France, there is no need to look back -- only the need to be thankful that there is a cure for one's mistakes. If we lacked the necessity to think about our lives with foresight, we would lose parts of ourselves, who we are and what is important to us as individuals. The pill may solve the biological regrets in life, but it cannot change the emotional ones. The morning-after pill tells its users that it's OK to lack judgment. It's not. If you have taken nothing from college other than to learn from your "shoulda coulda woulda" regrets, you have earned more than your tuition's worth (and certainly learned more than French schoolchildren are learning). The entrance into the adult world isn't through going to the nurse's office and taking a pill; it's through enduring the emotional morning after, and what you learn from it.