The Secret To Saying I'm Sorry

I just accused my fella of bad kitchen hygiene.

“You did a terrible job washing this,” I told him, brandishing the offending pan in front of me, in all of its sticky glory.

“I didn’t wash it. You did,” was my fella’s reply.

As soon as he said it, I realized he was right. I remembered being in a rush to suds the pan up so I wouldn’t miss the first few minutes of “America’s Funniest Home Videos”, a Sunday night favorite at our house.

It sucks to be wrong. It sucks to have to say you’re sorry. I am bad at both these things. I am getting better. Because we have a 9 year old who’s pretty good at it. (Clearly, this shows that both nature & nurture theories are a bunch of bunk.) The 9 year old has shown me that a good apology consists of 3 parts:

1.     You say you’re sorry. No justifications. No “buts”. No blaming the other person for why you did the rotten thing you did or said.

2.    You say it as quickly as you’re able after the offending incident. Not 6 hours later or a day later or never. You own up, as quickly as humanly possible.

3.    You say you’ll try to do better in the future & ask forgiveness.

Here’s what it looks like: “I’m sorry. I was wrong (or I made a mistake). I’m going to try really hard not to do that again. Do you forgive me?”

You might have to do step 3 multiple times, depending on how egregious your mistake. Take it from me, a recovering hot head who once threw a Big Gulp slurpee at an offending boyfriend.  

Everybody makes mistakes. It’s what you do when you realize the mistake that matters. That’s what they call character. And you want to have character, not be a character. This is what I learned from the Big Gulp incident, which put me firmly in the latter category.