i'm sorry (if i must be)

On slippery slope, Bode Miller apologizes - Sports - International Herald Tribune

When I was a kid and some altercation with another kid was getting a little out of hand some well-meaning adult would always step in and make one of us, or both, apologize. “Tell Billy you’re sorry, John,” would be the usual refrain, delivered lyrically, as if sing-song would add power to the command.

I’d always comply -– no other way to get rid of the narc and prevent escalation to the court of mommy and daddy -- but it was not sincere, expressed in the most grudging way possible. And if “Billy” was foolish enough to gloat when the adult left I would retract it with a new dose of pain. “I didn’t mean it, stupid!” I’d say, delivered lyrically, knowing sing-song would rub salt into the wound.

I still find myself occasionally reluctant to apologize for something that I should be sorry for, still wrestling that old instinct to the mat before doing the right thing. I don’t have much to apologize for these days, fortunately, but I am reminded of this sort of evasiveness very often. Apparently we all had the same experiences growing up because public people don’t seem capable of apologizing directly for bad behavior and dumb remarks and never seem to do so without pressure from, well, a grownup.

An apology is: “I was wrong.” An apology isn’t: “I’m sorry, if anybody was offended by my [words][deeds][what my words/deeds were interpreted to mean].”

Bode miller is the latest practitioner of the art of the non-apology. In an apparently true statement on “60 Minutes”, the reigning overall World Cup champion said he had raced drunk. Under pressure he issued a statement, because his comments had “caused a lot of confusion and pain” for his team “and even just family and friends who have supported me, who I think are subject to only what the media puts out in America.”

Some inner circle. They only know what they read about their homey Bode in the newspaper.

“And because of the way I made those comments in the 60 Minutes interview it caused a lot of confusion and pain for all those people and obviously that’s nothing I want to do so firstly I’d like to apologize to them,” Bode said.

So, he’s sorry for outing himself about being guilty of RUI? For letting the world know what his friends and family and team might have known all along and kept silent about for his benefit?

An apology is: “I’m sorry for drinking on the job. It is especially poor behavior for an elite athlete. I have set a terrible example, and I’m sure my bad behavior has contributed to poor performances that let my teammates and fans down.”

Oh yeah -- I’m sorry for wasting your time with this diatribe. I mean it -- really.

Santa, Science and the Holidays

My favorite "season" comes to an end today with the dismantling and storage for another year of our outside Christmas decorations. For us the season begins back in October, with Halloween -- not my favorite holiday but a fav of my wife and daughter who, at 12, is developing new takes on, well, just about everything (more on this later).

Our spirits begin lifting in earnest as October begins, as we anticipate the next three lighthearted months. After halloween passes, and everyone is officially sick of whatever remains of "our" candy, we stay on an upwardly spiralling emotional trajectory through Thanksgiving, no matter how we choose to celebrate it, which is followed a week later by my daughter's birthday, and then Christmas.

By New Year's (a sort of phoney holiday, I have decided, although not quite as bogus as Groundhog Day) I am not so much weary from all the work that has been associated with holidays as I am irrationally apprehensive about what is to come, or just let down that it will be three quarters of a year before the fun begins again.

And now the next few seasons will be transitional, I think, since my daughter is far from the wide-eyed believer of all manner of things that she was, for far too short a time, only yesterday. She tried to find a middle ground for Halloween, at first declaring that she would not wear a costume — but would go out and collect candy, studiously not describing this activity as "trick or treating." She then blinked, I think after gaining consensus with her two best friends, and the three set out in disguise (Audrey as Gogo Yubari from "Kill Bill Volume I") with dads in tow, but at a respectful distance.

For these next few years, the better to establish her credentials as a adult, Audrey will cease to believe in Santa, returning to the fold after only a few soulless years, I hope, as I did after my skeptical, uncomfortable and often angry teens.

Nancy and I have already outed ourselves as the handmaidens of the Easter Bunny, a fiction Audrey discovered was not entirely as we had described when I forgot to lock a door and she saw several dozen plastic eggs and bags of candy on our bed a few years ago. She herself scientifically proved the non-existence of the tooth fairy a couple of years ago by intentionally not telling us that she had lost a tooth before putting it, in secret, under her pillow and discovering the next morning -- Eureka! -- that nothing had been exchanged for it as she slept. Quod est demonstratum: The tooth fairy depends on parental notification.

But santa, like god, is another matter, beyond the reach of science. While I count myself as a defender of this faith I will not be evangelical: Not just because that isn't my style but because I don't have to be.

Audrey will see the truth of the matter for herself when the time comes, or she will not. That is the way of the world.

all for one

so the fam has decided to join me in vegan-ville, each for their own reasons. my wife, nancy, has been a vegan and a vegetarian and has always been a wiser eater than i, light years ahead of nearly everyone on nitrites, trans-fat, etc. my daughter, who recently turned 12, finds it appealing i think because there is a certain cachet about it just now -- there are hip eco undertones, with so many pop icons living the veg lifestyle (or at least saying they do). or perhaps i sell her short.

but as a family of vegans it will be the first time in living memory (sorry for the hackneyed journo phrase, but i am a hackneyed journo and am using it exactly as intended: to gloss over the fact i don't know the fact and am too lazy to ascertain it) that we will all be eating from the same trough. For the previous two years, give or take, i had been an atkins adherent, which didn't exactly exclude my wife and daughter but meant i had to be picky in other ways, and avoid such communal food as bread and pasta. when my wife was a pure veg a few years ago, she was the odd one out.

so now we are potentially in sync and, since i am mr. mom at the moment, will happily bear the lion's share (can vegans use that metaphor? this one, not a fanatic, certainly can) of meal prep.