Born Sorry
awfully, terribly, frightfully sorry.
I’m sorry. My life is an open-ended nuisance, which I’ll die making amends for. I apologise, and if I’m told there’s no need, I apologise for apologising.
One day, I will apologise for the inconvenience of my own murder. The last clotted words from my open throat, “Sorry about the mess.” As you’re disposing of my body anyway, let’s bury the hatchet, too. After barging into my master bedroom, I’ll apologise for spoiling the mood of my own cuckolding. I always apologise, profusely, as I orgasm. An apology, they say, is never premature.
I hail from a nation of dithering apologists. The United Kingdom is a state of sorry affairs. Probably, the last civilisation on earth that still begs your pardon. We are awfully, terribly, frightfully sorry.
If two pedestrians get within a 6-foot radius, each splutter out a volley of involuntary sorriness. Everybody involved, ab-so-lutely mortified about the utter imposition of their material existence. The tension of a suppressed sorry can rupture an Englishman’s spleen in a terminal jiffy. I heard on the Joe Rogan podcast that the spleen actually carries the unrepented blunders of our past lives.
Most Engys show more respect for the integrity of a bus stop queue, than the dignity of the people waiting in it. Although, when I come home, I do find the disproportionate politeness comforting. I’m a sorry son of a bitch - sorry, mum - but, at the very least, I’m not rude.
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An elderly woman snuck past us in the US immigration queue on our last family holiday so I explained to my kids in a slightly too loud voice that she was about a million years old so she probably had less time to spare than us.
I'd rather have too much politeness, and the slightly exasperating litanies of apologies of the Britons than the I-own-the-fucking-place-out-of-my-way entitlement of other nations (cough, Italy, cough).