Apologia

On an average day, I am accosted by three or four beggars who apparently believe that some portion of any monies I might have about my person can reasonably be classified as “extra.” As in, do I have extra change? Yeah, that’s why I work every day – to keep a surfeit of “extra” money, in case I’m asked.

Yesterday, I faced a new wrinkle. One of the “Occupy Seattle” denizens actually asked me if I had “funds for the cause.”  I declined making a donation and hurried past, not being entirely certain I could make the 5:06 and not wanting to stand in the rain waiting for the next limo – er, bus! I mean, bus!

The Saviour of Society who’d requested a grant apparently found my response too abrupt and decided I needed to be brought down a peg in front of all my fellow just-got-off-work-and-in-a-hurry-to-get-home-out-of-the-weather-ites. In a voice loud enough to carry from Pike to Pine and back again, she asked, “Don’t you care about humanity? Human rights? We’re the 99!”

I didn’t turn around but I continued to hear her exhortations as I crossed Pine and turned West toward the bus stop. Several of the folks who witnessed the exchange broke out in chortles and one lady said, “Ooh, I think you might have upset her!”

I went on my way and hadn’t thought about the encounter until I saw an article about one of the Occupy X groups today. And I thought, perhaps I really should have been more receptive to her plea. Perhaps I owe her an apology. And everyone knows the best apology is a public apology, so here goes.

Dear young 99 percent lady:

I apologize for being too abrupt in my refusal to contribute to your cause last week. I must have been distracted by the freezing rain and the fact that I’d just put in nine hours working as an advocate for persons living with disabilities and I failed to take the time to give you money to support your more important pursuits. I don’t know how I could have been so unfeeling.

I truly am sorry that you felt ignored. For the fact that you and your compatriots have not been able to make any headway in changing the world, I am also sorry.

I regret that most of us have to make a living and thus have utterly failed to pay you the attention you so obviously feel you deserve.  For being less than receptive to your yelling and drum-beating, I apologize.

I am sorry that the world is not fair and I accept my share of the responsibility for having failed thus far to right all of society’s wrongs.

For the imbalance of trade, I am penitent. I take the blame for plague, crop failure and fat people in stretch pants.

Sad-eyed doggies are almost entirely my fault, as are drought in Africa, tsunamis and the duck-billed lips that have of late befallen so many aging celebrities.

For lying politicians and the decline of serious journalism, I ask your forgiveness. Also for tornadoes, floods and teenagers wearing pants that don’t cover their butts.

I am burdened by the knowledge that I’ve utterly failed to eradicate cellulite, crabgrass or computer dialers. And I lie awake nights tortured by guilt over the proliferation of ’reality’ television programming focused on pawn shops, bounty hunters or brain-stunted idiots named Snookie.

Had I only paused to think, I might have offered my abject apologies for global warming, corporate greed and the fact that sometimes, crooks get away with, well, being crooks.

For these and so many, many other failures of civilization, let me offer my official mea maxima culpa. Truly, would that I could right the world’s wrongs. I can’t do that and really, I. Am. So. Sorry.

But there is this one thing…

After much soul searching, I do have to admit that I really don’t feel inclined to accept blame for the fact that you’re a shrill, self-important, unrepentant leech whose view of the world is limited to platitudes that will fit on your cardboard sign and whose approach to effecting change involves camping out in designer camping gear, pausing for hourly lattes, and screaming at people who are sincerely trying to make a difference in ways that have a chance of actually working.

That one’s on you.