I behaved badly with two old lovers. Years later, when I took one to lunch to apologise, it made it worse.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 4 March 2017 source ↗
The question
Who deserves an apology from you, and for what?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A fixed Guardian Q&A prompt asked directly across respondents and years.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
I behaved badly with two old lovers. Years later, when I took one to lunch to apologise, it made it worse.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 4 March 2017 source ↗
My brother: I never meant to kill your pet frog. I thought I was doing a good deed cleaning the mossy tank with bleach. Can I also say sorry to the frog?
To people who I’ve made a really quick joke about on stage and hurt.
When I was 17 I didn’t visit my gran for six weeks as I was out partying. At the end of that summer she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. I never saw the real her again. I would love to say sorry to her as I loved her so much.
Helen Edmundson, because I wasn’t able to be a better friend at school.
Seeing the future die, from Bobby Kennedy to dear friends.
Sometimes when I’m on a plane, as I often am, the weather is rough and we’re worried about going down. I think: If I hold the hand of the person next to me, I’ll be holding everyone’s hand. Like my dear friend, the late Wilma Mankiller, principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, I want to know: I’m going to the other side of the mountain.
Being a salesgirl in a baby shop where the others said things like, “He’s Jewish, but she’s American.” Also, after college, being a waitress in London, and trying to make change in the old money of shillings and pence.
Since hostile people still call me a former Playboy Bunny, even at 82, I probably shouldn’t have done that in my youth, even to write an exposé. And since a couple of times they’ve also referred to me as a former CIA agent, because I went to two Soviet-era communist youth festivals, I probably shouldn’t have done that, either. Yet if I hadn’t done both, I might have judged other people by such empty symbols, too.
I haven’t done it yet.
Feeling you want someone else’s welfare as much and sometimes more than your own.
Caroline Lucas, Jess Phillips, Sadiq Khan, Krishnan Guru-Murthy, Jon Snow, John Simpson
Search the directory for somebody in particular.