I created this blog as a dumping ground for thoughts and websites that I accumulate each day, not necessarily as a place for confiding my innermost secrets. My innermost secrets are, on the whole, rather lame.
But I saw a squirrel outside today and it reminded me of something stupid that I said in, oh, 1998 or so. I was in my graduate program’s shared workspace and I had gotten into a (not terribly heated) argument about gray squirrels.
For some reason I argued that gray squirrels were not a destructive influence on populations of European reds. In fact, I believe I stated that gray squirrels were a European import that had run amok in the US. That was just plain stupid and I knew it even as I said it. I had conflated in my mind European red squirrels with fox squirrels, an American variant that I remembered from a zoo placard was also endangered from gray squirrel competition. But refused to apologize once I realized my error…and my opponent either conceded or gave up. I feel tremendous guilt over that incident. It was a valuable lesson in shutting up already.
I never apologized to that woman — and I would now if I could remember her name.
I am sorry.
Also, when you think about it, “squirrel” is a weird word. That part wasn’t a confession, just an observation.