This is about achievements or skills, and not actions, though I could make several lists built around the latter.

Instead, these are skills I was not born with, or couldn’t be bothered to master, and it’s probably a bit late to go back and see what I can do about any of them.

But, to be sure, I am not at all unhappy at how things actually turned out. These are regrets more in the vein of “wouldn’t that be cool to mention/show off at a party”?

So, counting down from 10 …

10. I regret I don’t have perfect pitch. The ability to hear a note, and tell you, “Oh, that’s C-sharp.” Apparently, people with perfect pitch are generally born predisposed to it. About one person out of 10,000 has it.

9. I regret I never mastered a second language. For a few years there I was not awful in German, but German is not something you get much chance to use, in California, and it withered away, and now I am happy to be able to ask for directions. All that stuff about “a second soul” with a second language … not me. People who can speak four, five languages, that’s mind-boggling.

8. I regret I have never sailed in the Volvo Ocean Race. Though I know that if I had the chance I would be perfectly useless at it because I would have horrible motion sickness and, no doubt, would beg to be put ashore — or thrown over the side. I also regret not becoming an astronaut but … see above.

7. I regret never riding the Orient Express. Apparently it stopped running in 1977.

6. I regret I didn’t fight my way through calculus. Math had been easy for me right up through second-year algebra; it went up on the board, and I got it. Then I didn’t get calculus or trig right off the bat, and I quit on it.

5. I regret I can’t dunk a basketball. Maybe if I had worked at it nonstop as a teen, wore ankle weights, all that … but I’m guessing it was never going to happen. What a rush it must be to go up … and throw down a dunk. (While considering this, maybe I should also regret an inability to palm a basketball, which makes dunking trickier.)

4. I regret not reading more classics. I considered myself lucky, in high school and college, to somehow avoid the “read a bunch of classics” classes. I’m slowly clawing my way through them, but miles to go. … I am about to finish Lord Jim, all these years later.

3.I regret not setting foot in all 50 U.S. states. I’m 10 short.

2. I regret I never met my grandfathers. One died 13 years before I was born. The other was institutionalized with a brain injury from a mine explosion. So, this would call for some sort of miracle. I suppose this is a yearning more than a regret, because nothing could be done.

1. I regret not being a chess grandmaster. No, really. Wouldn’t that be cool? You look like a regular guy, maybe a bit bookish, but you can beat 99.999 percent of the people in the world in chess. OK, sure, I realize that advanced skills in chess might mean a bit of madness, too (hello, Bobby Fischer), but I think I might take that chance.