Time Travel Apology Tour
I have been thinking, the last few years, how nice it would be to have a time machine, to enable one to go back in time and try to smooth over one’s screw ups. Oh, not change the past – that would change who you are as a person, but to go behind you when you have been cruel, mean or just self-centered, and say, “He’ll grow up. I’m sorry for the pain the idiot has caused you, but, well, this is part of his growing up process.”
There are those who cling to the mantra, “Never apologize. It just makes you look weak,” but these folks are just intellectual and emotional buffoons.
But to be able to retrace your steps and offer at least a little solace to those you’ve mangled a little in your journey, wouldn’t that be great? Like most, I think, I have a guilty conscience about some of he things I have sad and done ver the decades. I wouldn’t change any of them – who would I be if I didn’t screw up? But to be able to apologize in some fashion, not years later, but seconds after you’ve made an ass of yourself – that would be a prize beyond jewels.
Hell, it wouldn’t even have to be me. I’d be pleased as punch to have the Doctor retrace my footsteps, or Marty McFly, Doc Brown, Sarah Jane Smith (sigh) or even Tony and Doug, though they’d probably get in fights with everyone around within minutes.
I’ve apologized to folks years after the fact, but somehow, everything gets diluted by time. No, I’d take the Time Travel Apology any time.
*****
Quote of the Day
The newspapers used to call the sports pages the “toy department” for a reason. it was, after all, only sports.
But sports were always more than that for the black athlete. Sports was the place, at least, that fit the American Dream, where the scoreboard guaranteed fairness. Even that was an exaggeration, for when black athletes used their wealth and fame to exercise full citizenship – as rich people do across the world – they were invariably told to stick to sports. – Edward Bryant “(Holding Court: The return of the political athlete” – Mother Jones, June 2018
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