As Elton John once sang, “Sorry seems to be the hardest word;” that is, unless you’re Irish. I feel as though the urge to trot out the word “sorry” with wild abandon is imprinted within our very DNA, and it’s funny to see how even those who have lived here only a short time quickly get sucked into this very Irish cultural quirk.
Sorry, but resistance is futile on this one.
Like me, I’m willing to bet you say the word “sorry” unconsciously on the daily. Yes, even you who swear they don’t say it all the time or are trying hard not to. You’ve probably uttered it several times already today. Maybe you bumped shoulders with someone on a packed bus and “sorry” tumbled out of your mouth on autopilot in a whispered tone, so under the radar, it’s like asking you to remember how many times you took an intake of breath today.
Maybe you muttered an automatic “sorry” to the person you walked towards on the path to work, or “sorry” to the barista before ordering your morning coffee, or “sorry” to the person you sidestepped at the door as you left (you might have even said “sorry” to the door itself for good measure). “Sorry” just flows out of our mouths without us even realising it.
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Women’s bathrooms are usually a hotbed of “sorrys”, so recently, as a bit of a social experiment, I tried to slow down and actively notice how much the word “sorry” gets bandied about in the women’s changing room of my local leisure centre. Naturally, at this time of year, the place is packed to the gills with newbies and regulars all wanting to get on the January fitness bandwagon and in true Irish style, there we were, all whispering “sorrys” to one another back and forth like snuff at a wake. “Sorry” for doing nothing other than taking up personal space to change clothes, open doors, step in and out of the shower, use a hairdryer, or simply exist.
The funny thing is, though, none of us was actually sorry for any of these things, because in Irish life, “sorry” has lost almost all its meaning. It’s rarely about contrition. Instead, it’s a verbal comma or ingrained social habit we can’t easily shake.
In most other countries in mainland Europe, you’d rarely hear these same non-stop husky-voiced utterances in public spaces. When have you ever heard Parisians throw “pardons” around the Métro unless absolutely necessary or heard the Spanish “lo siento-ing” to each other to beat the band every time they walk across a packed pedestrian crossing?
To be honest, no one else says “sorry” quite as much as us, except maybe the Canadians. But while our cultural cousins across the water share our grá for over-apologising, we seem to win outright when it comes to weaponising the word to its full passive-aggressive potential.
“Sorry, what’s that now?” Oh yes, make no mistake about it, we are masters at transforming “sorry” from an innocent word of contrition, into a quietly hostile grenade we can throw into a conversation, without appearing to be fully confrontational.
Nothing achieves this better than by adding in our other most favourite spoken word, “now”, after sorry. If you’re sceptical about whether or not you say this too much as well, I challenge you to listen to any toddler or small child when they do something like plonk down on their butt. I’m willing to bet they’ll huff out a “now” before doing so, mimicking their parents’ love of saying “now” before or after practically any act.
The addition of “now” immediately takes “sorry” from amiable social lubricant or innocent verbal tick, into passive-aggressive territory, and you better watch out, because the gulf between “sorry” and “sorry now” is massive.
Last week, still recovering from the post-festive overload and trying to get my head around the incredibly slow passing of time that happens for the entirety of January, I found myself on the receiving end of the quintessential Irish “sorry now”.
I was standing in the supermarket looking at the enormous choice of yoghurts in the fridge aisle. My overworked perimenopausal brain started glitching at the exact moment I needed to recall which brand my children had asked for, because, as any parent knows, one child likes one flavour and the other hates it with a passion. Anyway, my mind was somewhere else in that moment, but my pause was obviously a beat too long for the impatient woman behind me huffing, who whispered out an exasperated “Sorry now” as her arm, not so much brushed past my face, but more elbowed me right in the chops, sidelining me from the fridge where she went on to grab a pack of brightly coloured yoghurts.
She wasn’t sorry, of course. Not in the slightest. Not even one bit. What she wanted to say was “excuse me,” or “can I get in there?” I even would have preferred an honest, “would you ever hurry up, you’re taking ages staring into the yoghurt abyss.”
But sorry now, we’re Irish, we don’t do that.
She was gone with her trolley before I could counter her snarky non-confrontational “sorry now” with a passive-aggressive belter of my own. Something like, “Sorry now, I’m in your way, am I?”
Which of course would have meant I was not sorry, and I was not going to move.
