Cook County Juvenile Court, with detention center – Audy Home – upstairs. At 1100 South Hamilton, pretty far Off Broadway.

A 2003 episode of This American Life had 20 very short stories, and the last story is apology-related and amazing.

Told by Ira Glass, it’s from a performance at the Audy Home, the unofficial/historic name for the juvenile detention center in Chicago. The teenaged girls there put on a musical for an audience of family members – mostly their mothers and grandmothers, Glass reports.

No, not Avenue Q.

The plot follows the misadventures of Candace – shoplifting, gangs, drugs, weapons, arrest, incarceration – and the strife between her and her mother.

Then the narrator says, “And this is how Candace feels about her mom now.” All the girls in the play line up and sing. The song begins:

Mama, I’m sorry

for what I have done

I was arrested and ended up here

in the Audy Home.

Oh, I’m sorry

for putting you through all of this.

I know you are mad about all the good times

that we missed.

I’m ready to come back home.

I’m willing to make a change.

Everyone was in tears – the girls, their families, probably Glass. He sounds awed by hearing the girls “saying this thing that can be so hard to say in any case… singing it out and hoping that it can heal something that’s going to be hard to heal…” Glass titled it “The Greatest Moment I Ever Saw on a Stage.”

Ira Glass, at a less moving event.

It’s eloquent (and short) – do listen to it when you have a chance.