Regret #atozchallenge

Rummaging through the pages of newspaper suddenly my eyes caught an ad. It mentioned REGRET in bold and caps. The ad was asking to look at the sale of your life or you'll regret it later. It made me think is regret a word for these feelings just like we use wow! to express astonishment, yay! For happy and so on...the emoticon world. What do I regret?? On a self help angle I don't regret a thing I did because those very things make me what I am today. But yes there are so many small little things that I do unintentionally that I regret them happening even today.

One such regret I still hold for that day. We were running few courses for school kids, few classes in summers. Due to more than our expectation admissions we got a bit lost in keeping track record of class wise students. Some names were missing altogether,  there were multiple entries at places at places, so clear the confusion I assigned one of the interns to call and ask every student whether they are coming or not and take a general feedback.

She called everyone and then Harshali too. The moment Harshali's mom heard -"class se bol rahi hun ma'am Harshali class aa rahi hai??" that's it she started questioning - "why she is not coming??" and without hearing any further called her father. Since the parents got hyper whether Harshali was coming to class or not as she as per them was a regular student from 5 days and this intern was asking them why she didn't attended the class today.

Harshali's father called 2-3 times to check on data and the inter forwarded all the details of her classes and apologized as Harshali's name was mentioned in one class but was attending another class which started 4 days before.

At the end of the day Harshali's father came along Harshali to check everything and they met me. I told them that it was our mistake and her name was in one class and she was attending another, showed them her attendance and other files why we got confused. He didn't say anything just listened to me with a sheepish smile. But I couldn't see Harshali eye to eye because she had red eyes. She still had tears welled up under and I knew just one glance at her and she'll let go of her barriers and cry wild. No amount of my sorry or my guilt can soothe her.

I know it was our mistake in framing those words which led that child go through God knows what not for those few hours between that call and her father meeting me. It is one regret I cannot overcome. But at the same time it saddens me why parents trust others over their own kids. Or why parents doubt their child so much??  Why parents think their child would hide things from them or go the wrong way if they are not strict with them?