The Non-Expert
How to Apologize to Your Girlfriend
Experts answer what they know. The Non-Expert answers anything. This week ROSECRANS BALDWIN helps a young man who skipped his anniversary learn how to say he’s sorry.
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Question: I was trying to tell my girlfriend that I’m sorry for not going to Six Flags with her on our three-year anniversary.—R.
Answer: Cryptic, tragic, poorly written—R., despite the message, you’ve got yourself a deal. Feel free to use any tactic that seems relevant:
Question: I was trying to tell my girlfriend that I’m sorry for not going to Six Flags with her on our three-year anniversary.—R.
Answer: Cryptic, tragic, poorly written—R., despite the message, you’ve got yourself a deal. Feel free to use any tactic that seems relevant:
How to Apologize to Your Girlfriend After Blowing Off Your Three-Year Anniversary
- Say you’ll meet her for dinner at the new, raved about and very expensive restaurant, but don’t show up. That way, she can meet someone new. Phone the maître d’ an hour later and pay for their meal.
- Show, don’t tell: Attach a dick to your face.
- Have her favorite pet stuffed, smiling, with “love is forever” tattooed on its stomach.
- Lose a leg; who’s sorry now?
- Be hungry for her again: After a two-week fast, say you got skinny to show her how awful she’d look if she weren’t so fat.
- Invent her a superhero identity featuring you as the reliable, naïve sidekick in tights. Exploit all entendres—bat caves, lassos of truth, etc.
- Recalibrate her sister’s and mother’s bathroom scales to be ten pounds heavier.
- Give her a dozen roses. Better than that, give her a single rose and a Mercedes. Better than that, fill the Mercedes with shoes. Better than that, dump yourself after she’s driven away.
- Let her use the bathroom pass more often than the other kids.
- Break up with your other girlfriends.
- Pat Benatar said, “Love is a battlefield.” Love is not a battlefield; Iraq is a battlefield, where two thousand American soldiers have died. Isn’t she glad you guys don’t live in Iraq?
- Swear off blowjobs, both ways.
- Detail her car.
- Practice apologizing on hookers. If she finds out, explain you wanted to be really sorry.
- Sign her up for a Match.com account.
- Send her on a beach vacation to Australia. On her trip home, arrange for her plane to crash on a remote island in the South Pacific. Stalk her with monsters, handsome men with five o’clock shadows, and a shark with a weird logo on its flank. Two weeks later, arrange for her to find a new iPod in the sand loaded with a home movie of your apology.
- Legally change your name—to your pet name.
- Say you’re sorry with a big bag of babies.
- Does your girlfriend like opera? So does Ewan McGregor. Inscribe his cell phone number (07761554841) down the side of a nine-inch rubber.
- Take the day off, go to Six Flags, and buy her all the souvenirs she would have wanted. Make sure you get a photo of yourself being sick after too many roller coasters.
- Tip her 20 bucks.
—Published November 4, 2005
