Unlike the calculating apology to the tooth fairy we ran a few weeks ago, this apology embraces its own crappiness.
If you’re truly not sorry, and you don’t care about maintaining a relationship with the person you have OSTENSIBLY wronged (OSTENSIBLY! because you feel you HAVE NOT WRONGED THE PERSON, DAGNABBIT!), don’t say you’re sorry. Better not to apologize than to apologize badly, resentfully, passive-aggressively.
Unless Miss P. forces you to.
Miss P is not the boss of my feelings!
I think Liam has a bright future in the creative arts.
Oh! And thank you to Ken Yee for directing this to our attention!
And if I really, truly, have NOTHING to BE sorry for, what do I say to Brody in the note that the tyrannical Miss P forced me to write? What do I write then?
At that point this becomes a pretty good note.
I am sorry that I don’t feel sorry.
Perhaps I have done nothing wrong to feel sorry about. (It was someone else who poured library paste onto Brody’s cornflakes.) Perhaps I am in total denial about personal responsibility for the effects of my actions. (I think the library paste just tipped over. It couldn’t have been MY elbow!) Perhaps I am a sociopath. (Library paste in cornflakes, so what? Others I can feel sorry, but I am incapable of that emotion. Poor me.) Perhaps I think library paste is GREAT on cornflakes, and Brody is a sissy for not trying my Gourmet Delite. Or maybe, Kenny held me at coodie-point, and it was pure self defense, I had to put the library paste in the corn flakes. What else could I have done?
I have made an effort to find remorse in the situation, but cannot find any.
Then why the heck send a note at all?
Because Miss P made me write it.
It is probably a lousy apology, but it may be the best one possible in the circumstances.