To celebrate the 70th anniversary of the classic board game Sorry! Parker Brothers has declared it to be National Sorry Week, which brings up two important points. First, the power of Parker Brothers is more far-reaching than I thought, and, second, it's half over already and you're just hearing about it now. Sorry.
Sorry! and other board games played a large part in my youthful education since they were more fun than school and had even more immediate relevance to real life than situation comedies, difficult as that is to believe.
Monopoly taught me the value of greed. The Game of Life taught me to accept everything the world had to throw at me as long as I could keep my little pink family happy. And Sorry! brought me the heady joys of petty vindictiveness, an endlessly useful tool that has served me as well in my business life as it has in my romance and child-rearing.
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An expression of shared sorrow uttered to place the speaker squarely on the side of the injured party so as to elicit more juicy details. "I'm so sorry! So what did Jake do after you threw the lasagna pan at his ear?"
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quote:"I said I was sorry, all right?" Delivered so that a refusal to accept this contrived confession somehow absolves the guilty party of all blame. I mean, he said he was sorry, what more could he do? Change? Make amends? Please.
Wow. That one's beautiful, Chris.
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posted
The Hallmark Sorry A mass-produced expression of contrition which perfectly expresses your highly personal emotional state and your overwhelming feelings of remorse, clearly displayed by the fact that you spent almost an hour picking it out and the cartoon on the front kinda looks like you. And, look, it's signed.
I'm sorry I hurt your feelings Your trust I have betrayed But I hope you can forgive me So I can still get laid.
[ November 17, 2004, 02:52 PM: Message edited by: Chris Bridges ]
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What about the turn-around sorry? Where someone asks for an apology and it's provided, but for a fault in the other person.
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The sorry whipped out as a last, desperate resort after the usual techniques of reason, pleading, non sequitars, diversion, sending others in to plead on your behalf, and totally ignoring the issue altogether have inexplicably failed.
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One of the most artful sorries, and one of the hardest to pull off, this is a sorry dripping with sincerity and earnestness, promising great changes and future dependability in a smooth and caring voice that speaks to the heart and would be completely convincing had it not been done before, over and over. After the fourth or five time, you begin to realize that the person apologizing is using the words the same way you parrot foreign language phrases you learned from a guidebook. He has no clue what he's really saying, but he's been told that it'll work.
[ November 17, 2004, 03:02 PM: Message edited by: Chris Bridges ]
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quote:(At the time, my best friend David and I preferred the game Trouble because it had the cool Pop-O-Matic dice bubble and the simple physics of it stimulated our young and inquiring minds. Namely, we were wondering what would happen if we could get a gerbil in there.)
quote:I'm sorry I hurt your feelings Your trust I have betrayed But I hope you can forgive me So I can still get laid.
Holy cow on ice, that was funny. Great article.
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It is with the deepest sympathy that I tell you the News-Journal Corporation and myself are not liable in any way for injuries sustained after reading any of my columns, regardless of their pinpoint accuracy and/or crippling hilarity. Please address any future corespondance to our legal team, who will be happy to explain just how sorry we are.
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The sorry dutifully delivered by a spouse or long-committed lover without conscious awareness, triggered by certain tones in the injured party's ranting. It is usually uttered while the speaker is engrossed in something else more interesting than their loved one's pain, such as garage sale listings or the parts of the men's magazine that fold out.
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posted
Okay, I'm a bit confused on the whole gerbil in the Pop-o-matic thing. You click it and what?... I mean, how would you know how many spaces to move afterwards?
This was a very funny column. And Kiki does NOT accept your apology.
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