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| | Thomas and I listened to this (re)broadcast today and the way home from being out and about.
It meant a lot to me to hear it. I think you might like to read what I heard...
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"WBEZ Chicago/Public Radio International
January 1, 1997
“This American Life” with Ira Glass
APOLOGY LINE
The impulse to confess, to admit the truth, to state your shame, is so important and so basic that in 1980 a New Yorker named Allan Bridge set up a telephone line that he called “The Apology Line.” The way it worked was that you could call and confess to anything that you wanted, and you’d be recorded, or you could call and listen to other people’s confessions. And over time the whole thing turned into this little community of confession: people recorded messages responding to each other’s apologies, people recorded messages responding to other messages. Mr. Apology, Allan Bridge, would actually leave messages responding himself, or sometimes he would call callers off the line.
Here’s some recordings from the line:
“Yes, I would like to apologize because I broke the town hall windows, I flooded the basement, I broke windows at the back of a store uptown. I feel pretty bad about it, ’cause I did so much vandalism. I’m only sixteen years old, and I did so much vandalism—if I was caught I’d be in jeuvy hall for a pretty long time, I’d say. I’m sorry for harassing the Republican officials, making the bomb threats, and the death notices. I’m sorry for the terrorism, the fire bombing that ... the guy paid me to do ... to some guy’s house. I’m sorry for uh, what else, the burnings in the streets, up [Smith]town, Long Island. I’m sorry for the way I’m calling right now—I’m calling by way of a phony credit card. I’m sorry for harassing the teacher in school—I feel bad about it. I’d like to have a new lease on life. I’m sorry for just harassing a lot of people, for causing pain to my family. I felt so sad I was sick, I was sick by it. That’s all I have to say. So long.”
“Hello, I am an Israeli. I want to apologize, I don’t know if even what I did was wrong or right, but when I was in Israel six months before I killed six Arabs at night with a gang of other Jewish settlers. At the time ... I believed we were fighting for our homeland to keep from the Arabs, but perhaps now that I am here in America I realize that maybe that killing is not right way, and I want to apologize. Thank you.”
“I want to apologize for something and maybe, well I guess it’s too late to apologize for, but I want to apologize for it now. My mother was bedridden for a while, and she used to get social security and welfare, and I had no job and I had no way of making money. And when she was hungry or thirsty I use to make her give me money ... to give her a drink, like she’d have to give me five dollars for a glass of water, ten dollars for a sandwich. And now, now she ... she’s passed away, and I can’t say I’m sorry to her, ’cause I know what I did was probably the most horrible thing in the world, and I’ll never be able to say I’m sorry to her, and I hope I go to hell and burn there for this, because it wasn’t right. And if there’s some way that she can hear me I just want to tell her I’m sorry. Thank you.”
“I’ve never told anyone this, except my shrink. I accidentally killed my younger sister when I was a very small child, and it’s, it’s haunted me all my life ’cause I didn’t really mean it. It was ... it was just a game to me, and I was really too young to realize what I was doing. I was putting her head inside a plastic bag and putting a rubber band around her neck, just to see her face turn blue, and I guess it was a lot of fun, and I didn’t mean [for] anything bad to happen but I guess I didn’t realize what would happen if I did this too long. And she ... suffocated and ... I ... I hid the plastic bag and I went out of the house—my parents weren’t home—and they never found out, they thought it was crib death, they never found out I did it. And ... you know I’ve, I’ve never been able to tell them—I think it would hurt them worse than having ... to losing her ... to find out that I did it. ... I sort of wish my parents could hear this tape but I guess they never will.”
“Um ... hi. I’m a runaway, and ... all I want to say is that I’m kind of sorry that I left. See I’m fifteen, I saw your number in the newspaper and when I saw it I had to call because it’s like, I mean, you walk around on the streets, all day long, just looking for someone who just might say: ‘Hey, want a place to go? Come with me. I’ll give you food and everything.’ And they won’t ask for anything back. That’s all I want. ... I guess I take up too much time on the tape, but ... I just gotta talk.”
The apology line doesn’t exist anymore. Mr. Apology, Allan Bridge, died in August of 1995. When he did, the line was deluged with hundreds of messages from its regular callers, grieving. His wife Marissa says it was never clear what the apology line had meant to people. For years people had used it to talk about all sorts of experiences.
[Marissa Bridge] I think that maybe the word “apology” means something bigger than just saying you’re sorry, at least maybe not the word but the line came to mean to people a place where one could go and bring their feelings. To confess, not necessarily about doing something wrong, but to confess about having a feeling.
[Ira Glass] When he was alive would you ever call the line or be tempted to call the line?
[Marissa Bridge] I called the line in the beginning, when I first knew him, before I moved in with him I called the line from time to time.
[Ira Glass] And you’d apologize for stuff?
[Marissa Bridge] Well, more to get his attention than anything else.... You know, things like, “I’m really sorry I was flirting with another guy,” ... all very much part of the mating game.
[Ira Glass] But once you actually had a real relationship with him you wouldn’t call the line and you didn’t feel a need to ever?
[Marissa Bridge] No ... but one thing that really struck me was that after he died I really turned into an apology line caller—someone I would define as an apology line caller—and ... the line was over, so ... when I really needed the line it wasn’t there. I was just completely lost, and I would have loved to have been able to call the apology line and have someone like Allan on the other side—very sympathetic, and understanding—to help me get through it, but unfortunately ... that didn’t happen. ... I’m a much darker person than I was before he died, and I think that I understand the callers and the line much better than I even did before.
[Ira Glass] He died in this scuba accident where he was hit by a jet skiier who then fled the scene and wasn’t caught. Have you thought about the kinds of people who would call the line, who used to call the line all the time, who had done bad things to other people and hurt other people and then would flee the scene and nobody would ever know ... have you thought about [that] jet skiier in terms of that, in terms of the people who used to call the line?
[Marissa Bridge] Yes, in fact the person that hit him would also be a prime candidate for the apology line, because we think that he know that he did something, because there were witnesses that saw the accident, and they saw someone, on a jet ski, hit him. They circled around once, and then took off. So, yeah.
[Ira Glass] But you can imagine those people actually calling the line—if they would’ve called the line, if the line had existed for them—what would have happened, what would Mr. Apology have said if he were around to say it?
[Marissa Bridge] I think he would be pretty pissed off but he would forgive them.... I think he would have been angry that he was hit—that was a total accident—but I think that if they would have apologized for hitting him he would have forgiven them. Because I think that forgiveness was a big part of his personality, I think he believed in the power of forgiveness, and everyone can be forgiven, if they’re sorry. I think that’s something that he really believed in."
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If you were going to apologize for something- what would you say???
just wondering... | | | Posted 11/7/2004 6:35 PM - 1 view - 2 comments
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