2016 Postmortem

iwillalwayswonderwhy

(2,602 posts) Mon Mar 14, 2016, 09:54 PM Mar 2016

I miss-spoke

I've been pondering this expression all weekend and I simply can't wrap my brain around it. It is not a reason. It didn't happen accidentally. "I had a correct statement in my head, but when I started to say it, the words somehow rearranged themselves into something insulting and untrue. Not my fault those words rearranged themselves."

See, I just can't make "I miss-spoke" as an excuse.

"It was a long time ago, and my memory of the events were wrong." That's a reason. That's an excuse.

"I was trying my hardest to think of something nice to say, and I thought back to that time period and remembered what a crisis AIDS was, and I thought it might have happened that way, but of course, I was mistaken". That's a reason. That's an excuse.

But to use "I miss-spoke", like it's enough, as if it's a mulligan, just doesn't cut it.

I'm trying to put my anger away, just like I did when President Reagan died and everyone was acting like he was a saint. I focused on my brother Kenny, and thought about how much I loved him and missed him, and how he sang happy birthday to me from the hospital just 4 weeks before he died. He always had a wonderful Irish tenor singing voice and a hearty laugh. His hair turned grey in his early thirties. He dyed it a brown that was so dark, it looked black. We were all calling him Superboy. He laughed. He was loved by many. It was Kenny who taught me about AIDS, while the Reagans looked away.

To Kenny. 1953-1991.