Jamie123

I've said this already, I know. But if I was a police officer and I'd been accused of a crime of which I was innocent (or if I was a lawyer acting on behalf of such a person) I don't think I'd object to there being someone on the jury familiar with the realities of being in the police force. Jurors are supposed to represent the same peer group to which the accused belongs.

The reality of my situation is that between my maternal grandmother requiring additional care due to being mentally ill, my incredible social awkwardness (it turns out that autism-spectrum conditions run on my dad's side; I'm going in on the 13th to try and get tested), and a variety of other issues like the bit about missions, I was functionally on my own through most of my teenage years and my early 20s. 
My family and various others were there physically, but it often took extraordinary circumstances to get them to actually pay attention when I tried to tell them that I was dealing with various situations. In particular, if I had a complaint about my health, but they couldn't actually see anything wrong with me, they just assumed I was either faking a situation or exaggerating a minor condition. Instead, I basically faced the world alone, with a few friends here and there for support. 
I paid the price. 
My health - both mental and physical - is terrible, and in fact I have a physical deformity because my scoliosis was allowed to set in; I got it later than normal, and so no one believed me about the various aches and pains I was feeling. 
I made a great many bad judgment calls that hurt a number of people, including myself. These decisions haunt me.
I'm trying to get better, but it's been a slow trek. It's only within the last few years that people around me have finally started to realize that I did in fact need them there when I was younger, that I'm in a bad place now because of it, and it's going to take professional help for me to get sorted. 

It may not be that the person is themselves doing something wrong, but rather that they're in a situation which is largely beyond their control and that they're longing for the before times when things were better and they might have had time to alter the course of everything. 
Remember, a lot of what I'm dealing with in life is because I chose to stay back home and help care for a mentally ill relative. That led to a lot of doors being closed for me and a lot of social isolation at church. 

Do you have the fourth of July in the UK?

Of course! Fourth of July! How could I have forgotten that?
It seems to me a strange time to have fireworks. We normally have ours 5 November on Guy Fawkes night.

It's only all that stuff, if you stop doing fun childish things, and lose your innocent childhood nature.  Not me.  I played out in the yard today, and now I'm sitting in my fun room surrounded by my toys, yellin' at the kid across the street.  Tonight we might go watch bright shiny things explode!

Of course, not everyone's childhood was happy, and I don't believe there's anyone who thought their childhood was happy at the time. As a kid I always thought that once I'd got this nonsense of childhood, school etc. out of the way, I'd have a glorious adulthood as a secret agent, or a spaceman - just like in the comics I used to read. Grown-ups don't have to deal with teachers who make you stand in the corner, or bullies who goad you into fighting them, and then pound you in the solar plexus till you keel over. Grown-ups are always telling you that if you "don't learn spell and do your sums properly" you'll be in trouble later, but you never believed them: your main worry was getting home without running into the kid with the big fists who blames you for losing the soccer match that afternoon. Adulthood will take care of itself, and it will be GLORIOUS!
When you get to be an adult it's all taxes and mortgages and not-enough-money, and how long the washing machine will last, and "will-the-car-break-down-today?" and "is-that-crack-in-the-wall-serious?" and "is-that-pain-in-my-chest-angina?" (sometimes you can't help but hope that it is!) and "how-will-I-pay-my-child's-college-fees?" and "if-only-I'd-remembered-to-put-the-cap-back-on-the-car-radiator!!!" etc. etc. etc. Then childhood looks rosy. You forget about the "bully-with-the-hard-fists" and the "teacher-who-so-unfairly-accused-you-of-talking-in-assembly" and remember the excitement of Christmas Eve (the presents you were longing for seem pretty lame now, but they didn't then) and those red candles burning in the golden whisky-bottle tops, decorated with holly leaves. Going to bed in your mother's old bed at grandma's, having just had a hot bath, and the feeling of the clean sheets on your still-damp toes. The big Christmas tree in church. Holidays by the sea - sucking rock and ice-cream, laughing at Mr. Punch*, splashing in the waves while the white clouds sailed overhead in the blue sky. Not a bully or a spiky sour-faced teacher in sight.
Wordsworth said "Heaven lies about us in our infancy". I don't think it does - or if it does, Hell is there too. But there's a certain mood in which Heaven's all you can remember.
*"Punch and Judy" is a traditional puppet show performed for children at the beach. It's still performed sometimes, but in a very toned-down form. In my childhood Mr. Punch (the main protagonist) was a wife-beater and multiple-murderer who is eventually sentenced to death, but escapes execution by killing the hangman. Don't ask me why this was so amusing, but in the politically-incorrect days of the 1970s it was hilarious.

I know you guys like the King James version best, but the Good News translation has a rather nice pithyness:
 

That reminds me of an "engineer" joke I once saw:
Engineer 1 arrives at Engineer 2's house on a very powerful motorcycle.
Engineer 2: Where did you get the wheels?
Engineer 1: Oh, a lady rode up to me on it yesterday, stripped off her leather suit and said: "Take what you want!" So I took the motorcycle.
Engineer 2: Wise choice, mate! The suit probably wouldn't have fit! 

That reminds me of an "engineer" joke I once saw:
Engineer 1 arrives at Engineer 2's house on a very powerful motorcycle.
Engineer 2: Where did you get the wheels?
Engineer 1: Oh, a lady rode up to me on it yesterday, stripped off her leather suit and said: "Take what you want!" So I took the motorcycle.
Engineer 2: Wise choice, mate! The suit probably wouldn't have fit! 

That reminds me of an "engineer" joke I once saw:
Engineer 1 arrives at Engineer 2's house on a very powerful motorcycle.
Engineer 2: Where did you get the wheels?
Engineer 1: Oh, a lady rode up to me on it yesterday, stripped off her leather suit and said: "Take what you want!" So I took the motorcycle.
Engineer 2: Wise choice, mate! The suit probably wouldn't have fit! 

Unless the defendant was himself an officer.

From The Telegraph:
Has he never heard of Catherine the Great?

From The Telegraph:
Has he never heard of Catherine the Great?

From The Telegraph:
Has he never heard of Catherine the Great?

I've been called or interviewed or whatever it's called for two juries. The first time I was rejected by the defense counsel; the second time, it was the prosecution. Both peremptory challenges. Looks like I'm an equal-opportunity offender.

I can only remember Donna Summer singing this song, and it came as a surprise that there were earlier versions - and that the original was none other than Richard Harris who played Albus Dumbledore!
It always puzzled me why anyone would get so emotional about a cake being left out in the rain. (And I'm not the only one - it comes high on a lot of "Songs With The Stupidest Lyrics Ever" lists.) But recently I discovered it is a true story. Jimmy Webb (who wrote the song) had a love affair with someone with whom he spent a lot of time in MacArthur Park in Los Angeles. And the incident with the cake really happened. The cake is not a metaphor: it was an actual cake which actually did get rained on.
When you're in love, the small things you share gain great significance, and their memories  evoke the greatest pain if (for whatever reason) you lost that love. The heart is a fragile thing.

Gotta love the burp at the end!

Gotta love the burp at the end!

I don't know what the final accounting of my life will be. But as for the intermediate accounts, I've learned that my worst screw-ups were rarely what I thought they were at the time.
P.S. Perhaps I should have said the cake is not ONLY a metaphor. A thing can be both real and metaphorical. Like Hosea's marriage.

I'm amazed that the lake is still green after all those years. There must have been a HUGE amount of icing on that cake!

What a great topic! I haven't thought about that song in probably 40 years, though I'm very familiar with it from my childhood. As a child, I thought the lyrics were bizarre and surrealistic. As I grew through my teens, I never thought to question my childhood viewpoint. So after reading Jamie's OP, I thought about the lyrics, and it occurred to me (because it was blindingly obvious to my almost-60-year-old brain) that this was a song about deeply regretting a lost love, and not about cake.
I sincerely wonder how many things in this life we think we know and understand, only to discover (either in this life or the next) that we had no idea at all what we were talking about. I spoke to my 16-year-old son about this realization, and we shared a good laugh.
When I stand before my Maker, I intend to thank him for the opportunity and blessing of my mortal experience. We learn lots of valuable lessons here, and sometimes our ignorance and hubris prove vastly entertaining when we finally see them.

Women can be very emotional creatures.  😁