Left Behind: I want you to forgive me OR "What the Hell does, 'Sorry,' mean, anyway?"

[Originally posted at Slacktivist.]
[In many ways the context is so bad that I think this works better without context.  Just be aware that the first sentence, which is a masterpiece of assholicness, is straight from canonical Left Behind.]

"I want you to forgive me for anything I said that hurt you personally or insulted you."

Hattie tilted her head to one side and looked at Rayford for a moment. He wondered if he'd been overly mushy and taken too much responsibility for his actions. Yes, that was surely it. He should have made it more clear that he understood it was really her fault.

Clearly her under-developed and strangely feminine brain had been thrown into disarray when he insinuated that he might, possibly, need to be forgiven of something.

Then Hattie said, "And I want a unicorn."

"Wh-what!?" was Rayford's stuttered response. Where was the forgiveness and praise he had anticipated?

"You want to be forgiven; I want a unicorn. We have both stated our desires," she said.

Rayford resisted the urge to shake his head. Leave it to a woman to not understand how to accept his magnanimousness and need to have it explained, probably in detail, how to respond to such simple words.

"Hattie," Rayford said as if he were speaking to a small child, "You're supposed to say, 'Apology accepted.'"

"You haven't apologized," she said. "You have to apologize for me to accept your apology."

"I have apologized," Rayford said, perhaps a little too loudly. She was difficult to work with. "I said--"

"That you wanted to be forgiven," Hattie said.

"That's an apology," Rayford said, wondering at how little this woman-thing understood of how the world worked. Did he have to explain everything?

"No, an apology is a statement that accepts responsibility and, sometimes but not always, asks to be forgiven," Hattie said. "Simply stating that you want to be forgiven is not an apology."

"But I do want to be forgiven," Rayford protested.

"Then maybe you should apologize," Hattie said with a smirk.

Rayford's brain broke.

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