Hello. I am an ass.

[blissmorgan]

You know the saying about "when you assume things it makes an ass out of you and me"? Really, making assumptions just means that one makes an ass out of oneself, and I definitely did that yesterday. There's also a saying about the importance of praising publicly, and chastising in private; it doesn't go so far as to make a recommendation vis a vis apologies, but I think it's safe to assume that one should make an apology in at least as public a forum as the one in which one did something wrong.

Yesterday, as part of my morning post, I wrote this:

My big brother turns 40 today, and while he planned way ahead for his wife's big birthday bash and reached out to lots of people at a special venue to really make it a thing, she...made a facebook invite for it and is having it at my parents' house. I am sad that it is not a bigger deal for him, and now that I'm thinking about it I am also mad at myself for not doing anything to help make it a big deal.

 

 

So, when she made the facebook invitation, it was with a comment about how she couldn't top what he had done for her birthday. I apparently processed this into some kind of lack of planning ahead on her part. I had literally no good reason to think that. Looking at it in restrospect, this may be one of the dumbest assumptions I have ever made, because every time that I have attended an event that she planned, it was PLANNED - clever decor, suitable and bountiful foods, good people.

Yesterday was, in fact, no different.

• There was a baseball theme to the whole of the party, which is perfectly suited to my brother; baseball has been a core and driving interest for him literally since we were children.
• She not only found decorations that looked like baseballs and paired them in interesting ways with balloons and bowls, but she and my mom also worked together to make excellent decoration featuring a wooden Lousiville Slugger and a baseball mitt that had belonged to my mother's father.
• In addition to an excellent spread of sandwiches, cheese and crackers, pasta, and other good things to eat, there were chocolate balls that looked like little baseballs, a bowl of Double Bubble, and a large popcorn bin full of microwave popcorn packets for people to take home.
• There was a cake with A Story that impressed me to no end the way that she manages to take no shit and find excellent deals in the face of adverse results.
• There was even a poster laid out like a baseball field, showing my parents' wedding photo at first base, a childhood photo of my brother at second base, their wedding photo at third base, and a family picture of them with their daughter as the HOME RUN!
• There were good people, and kids running around, and stories. 

It was everything a birthday celebration should be: it was loving and well-planned, bringing family and friends together to celebrate the birthday guy.

And then she got home and saw my post. A thoughtless assumption, not based at all in the reality of my knowledge of her. It was unkind, and it was hurtful, and I make no excuse for myself. I can only say that I was wrong, both in my assumption and expectations, and that is on nobody but me.

I am sorry I hurt her, and I know that saying that is not nearly enough to assuage the hurt that I caused. I can only accept that I did wrong, and sit with my own deed without making excuses. And I will try to do, and be, better, because she deserves better than I have been.

Comments

[fractalfrog]

Sounds like she was saying it wouldn't be Paris, and you assumed the ass end of Billerica instead of Vienna.

[blissmorgan]

That seems a pretty fair assessment.