By Gary Collins/reporter

In my desk buried under a couple hundred used sheets of paper, I have a small copy of The Merriam-Webster Dictionary.

On page 584, 12 words down, I came across a word—procrastinate.

Procrastinate, by its definition, is to put off habitually doing something that needs to be done. I have a very bad habit of doing just that.

Procrastinating, putting off things that one needs or wants to do, can leave regrets.

I felt those regrets two times in the past five years.

The first was in December 2002 around Christmas in St. Louis. My father and I were driving through the streets when something came up about Bob, my great-grandfather. He was 90 years old, and I’d never seen him before.

I wanted to see him in person, but I let myself get talked out of it .

“ He’s grumpy, cranky and not very friendly,” my dad said.

I let it go. Oh well, maybe I will see him later, I thought.

I didn’t see him that day, and there wasn’t very much I could do about it. I moved on. Maybe I should have been more forceful, but I wasn’t, though I was still curious to know something about him. I wanted to know his life story.

He died in August 2005.

The second regret happened that same year. My grandmother finally went on-line, and she got an e-mail address. So for awhile, we sent e-mails back and forth.

One day I asked some questions about her maternal great-grandparents. She said that she couldn’t really tell me anything about them because she was too young when they died.

She suggested that I call or e-mail her sister, Miltonia, who is oldest of the five and might know something about them.

Well, I’m a chronic procrastinator, and again I pushed it aside.

I never got around to calling my great-aunt. I procrastinated.

I got too busy, I let work and school get in the way.

She died that April. I remember meeting her only once.

I missed another opportunity. I barely knew either of them. Although I didn’t feel a great loss, I regret not taking the time I should have to get to know my relatives.

But as was the case with my great-grandfather, he didn’t really take the time to get to know too many of his younger relatives either.

The lesson learned here is don’t put off things that need to be done. I kept procrastinating; in the end, I missed out.