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Well, Ex-cuuuse Me!: My Preformated Apology for Offenses Given and Those I Have Yet To Give

I begin by noting that at present, as so often in the past, I’m sorry. Yes, I am very, very sorry. It was all my fault and I am sorry for it all. How could I have ever thought that ALL lives matter? How did I not see what a racist and deeply hurtful thought that has kept so many of the left-behinds in a psychic servitude unknown since Simon Legree met Little Eva down in the pawpaw patch?

I am sorry, as always, for what I said whatever it was that I said. It was thoughtless and rude. It wasn’t really what I meant or felt in my heart. Many have taken my remarks to mean other than what I said. Why I even meant them to mean other than what they meant when I said them.

Alas and alack, the damage is done and I can’t undo the past. All I can do is stand here trapped in the pillory of the present watching all those whom I have so wrongly wronged cry like the little girly-men they are, even you girls. Their pain is now my pain. I cringe in shame to see them writhe with the bleeding agony of those salty-tears gushes into the raw wounds I ripped open by my harsh and unconsidered remarks.

Believe you me I feel really bad about this. I feel even worse that I, through my abject failure to realize how deeply the dull chain-saw of my speech would chop into them, even, yea, down to the living blue-veined bone — that I simply stood by and allowed the molten lead of my senseless scorn to pour without limit into their raw and festering souls. I am, as I said, deeply sorry and feel bad besides.

In passing, I would like to note for the record, that I did not know the gun was loaded.

But I have heard the rising torrent of justifiable outrage; the howls of those whose most sacred, festering, and inane ideological beliefs I have eviscerated with the senseless whirring CuisineArt of my words. To them I offer, in deep and abject humility — since I am, because I spoke those words, lower than a cockroach’s stool stuck to the bottom of a homeless hermit’s shabby sandal in the storm drains of Las Vegas… (Deep breath) to them I tender my most sincere if unworthy apology.

Yes, at the chimes at midnight, I have heard the skin-shuddering shrieks of those who have been sliced into bloody gobbets of flesh by my remarks. Though I am unworthy to feel that pain, I feel it still as if it were a red-hot 3/4 inch Makita drill bit driven into the base of my skull and left there set on “Wash-Rinse-Repeat.”

So, well, I am sorry. I apologize. I didn’t think about what I said when I said it. I hurt feelings when all I meant to do was to either maim, kill, tenderize, or blend. I deeply regret that I diminished your self-esteem. I regret even more that I left you alive and able to talk to the news media over the noise of your sucking chest wound.

But since that is the case, please accept these following sentiments as my boilerplate apology, and remember to refer to them often in the decades to come:

I come to you today penitent, conscience-stricken, regretful, and contrite. I have been touched by your pain and deeply regret my words. I repent them with every shred of my soul. I am, for having hurt your feelings and bruised your tender buttons, a base and abject man mortified by my cheesy, contemptible, insignificant,. shabby, small, and pathetic being. I know now the low things I have said and I am filled with remorse, melancholy, and self-reproach. If I could have myself flogged fleshless by a flock of Carmelite nuns on Methamphetamine I would so. But I can’t locate those sisters right now, so I must continue to apologize.

I, therefore, must…

…continue to apologize.

I am so wretched to have said the bad words to you. They may well have been true, but I forgot that your feelings, no matter how puerile, always trump the truth in this world. So I admit that even though they were true, my words were unworthy of me and hurtful to you. I see your raw suppurating feelings oozing to the top of your mind and erupting from your mouth wrapped around your screams. I shall carry that Polaroid with me for the rest of my days right next to the organ donor card in my wallet. Can I fill one out for you?

But I digress.

I am compelled by my inner idiot to say that I bleed for you, wish only to console you, empathize with you, and open my heart in an anguished lament that my words, wittingly or unwittingly, have raised upon your soul these unlanced boils of your metaphysical angst. It is my hope you will allow me to lance them and to bandage them in the saline-soaked cloth of this apology.

I come before you today an abashed, chagrined, conscience-stricken, guilty, shamed, demeaned, crestfallen, humiliated, penitent, and mortified man. I can only seek, humbly, that one thing that will make me whole again after ripping the flesh of your feelings so senselessly. That one thing is the infinite balm of your acceptance of this, my guilty apology, and your forgiveness.

In this, I hope to be resurrected to the realm of the acceptably human. I live in this hope because I have a deep and abiding faith that although I am really, really sorry, you are the one person in the universe who is a sorrier son-of-a-bitch than I am.

Thank you for letting me share.

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • Hedge July 19, 2020, 5:36 PM

    Wordy version of “you all can eat a bag of dicks”.

  • No Name July 19, 2020, 7:28 PM

    I take it that you were married at one time or another.

  • Chris russell July 19, 2020, 9:21 PM

    Can I just say ditto Vanderleun and be excused?

  • Anne July 19, 2020, 9:34 PM

    No Name: Nice!

  • Kevin in PA July 19, 2020, 11:56 PM

    Damn good thing you gasped for air at the end of paragraph six!

  • John Venlet July 20, 2020, 5:39 AM

    Well, sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.

  • Jeff Brokaw July 20, 2020, 6:21 AM

    Whatever it was, make sure it doesn’t happen again!

  • CC July 20, 2020, 6:22 AM

    “Methinks he doth protesteth too much.”

  • Joel July 20, 2020, 6:31 AM

    “Well, sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”

    RACIST! I set fire to that elk statue. See what you made me do?

  • Fuel Filter July 20, 2020, 6:47 AM

    “ I take it that you were married at one time or another.”

    Now *that* is funny as hell!!

    Parenthetically, I also understand why you posted as “No Name”…you gotta still be married.

  • John Venlet July 20, 2020, 8:14 AM

    RACIST! I set fire to that elk statue. See what you made me do?

    And here I thought that you’d only burn out pack rats. Wandered rather far from the Desert Lair to get at that elk statue, Joel. Ha!

  • Jack July 20, 2020, 8:31 AM

    I have apologized to my wife a couple of times for being insensitive to her sensitivities but Kiss Me, I’m Irish, I’ve never felt that deeply about anything. And I never will.

  • Deathray July 20, 2020, 8:32 AM

    I’m throwing a rope over the tree limb now.
    Goodbye cruel world.

  • gwbnyc July 20, 2020, 9:00 AM

    I step up onto the block of ice, adjust the rope, and await my fate.

  • Sam L. July 20, 2020, 9:29 AM

    You left out “I did not realize there was an arrow nocked to my bow and unintentionally drawn back the bowstring…

  • James ONeil July 20, 2020, 9:48 AM

    Ha! & I say Ha! again Vanderleun! Your realize, I am quite certain, your apology was only 964 words long and that in this day and age that’s surely a sadly sorrowfully short semblance of an apology! Hawaiian shirt wearers apologizing at thrice that length are still unforgiven and jobless.

  • Steve in Greensboro July 20, 2020, 10:04 AM

    Miss Brenda Lee said it best.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGLR25EJtfE