By Rachel Sauer
Special to The Daily Sentinel
In what has been the long lead-up to next week’s Super Bowl LVII between the Chiefs and the Eagles, I feel like I’ve watched clips from a lot of post-game press conferences in which a guy sitting behind a table says, “Look, I’m not here to make excuses.”
This is always said in a mien of, “But I AM here to tell you your dog died” – unsmiling and world-weary in a way that lets us know he experiences 11% more gravity than everyone else.
The admission of not being there to make excuses is generally humble and weighted by sighs, but unapologetic; a little defiant, even. It dares us to think we could do a better job of sidestepping around grown men who are the approximate density of mid-size excavators.
But I’m not here to make excuses for these polo shirted guys at post-game press conferences. I’m here to make excuses for myself, and the terrible yet often life-saving act of making excuses.
To be clear, I’m not talking about making excuses to justify truly horrible behavior of the “I lured you into a cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme because my parents never bought me a Barbie Dream House” variety.
No, I’m talking about the little excuses we make every day, mostly to get out of doing stuff we don’t want to do.
For example, the other day a colleague asked me if I’d be interested in attending an optional lunchtime brownbag about something leadership-y – leveraging synergies or foraging paradigms, whatever, I don’t remember. Anyway, I very definitely didn’t want to attend.
However, because my colleague DID want to attend, I semi-frantically worried about what to say. Sure, “No, thanks” would be the most straightforward and honest response, but would the subtext seem judgmental? Which is bonkers and neurotic, but that’s life in 2023.
“I’m busy” definitely would have been too terse and a little untrue, while “Sorry, I’m immobile just now on account of this ol’ trick ankle (rueful gesture at perfectly fine ankle)” would have been completely untrue.
So, I made an excuse: “Oh, dang! But I have to finish this thing.”
The thing in question was my snack, but I didn’t think it was necessary to elaborate. I was just congratulating myself for not finishing with a perky “Next time!” I’m pretty sure I won’t want to attend that one, either.
These weird little excuses occupy fraught moral territory. Are they always on the righteous side of the truth? Definitely not. Yet still I categorize them as not-exactly-lies, with the omissions and fudging of facts justified as sparing feelings, as a kindness, as another step in my ongoing work of delusional self-mythologizing: Yes, NORMALLY I would be very game to leave the house at 8 p.m. on a Friday and go somewhere loud and overpriced, just not THIS time.
I don’t know why it’s so hard to just say “no, thanks” sometimes, but it is! Being human is very hard!
Instead, it’s a litany of excuses that I’m 93% sure people can see right through. My go-to is “I have to finish this thing,” but I’ve also deployed:
- “Oh, man, there’s something I have to take care of at the house and it can’t wait”: Technically true, on account of I have two cats and plants and a toilet that leaked through the downstairs ceiling one time and might again, you just never know. Plus, the couch isn’t going to sit on itself.
- “Boy, I just have to take care of some errands I didn’t get to yet”: I force this into truth-ish by walking to the convenience store on the corner and getting a soda. Errand = taken care of!
- “Gosh, I need to send some messages and I don’t know how long it will take”: This hints at business emails, I like to think, but texts are also messages! And I don’t actually know how long it will take to express my newest theories about the cruelly cancelled show “1899” to my brother.
Again, WHY DON’T I JUST SAY “NO, THANK YOU”????? And why so much implied taking care of stuff? You’d think it’s all I do.
In reality, the best and most honest thing to say would be, “I love you and it means so much that you thought of me, but I don’t want to this time.”
Nope, instead I don the baseball hat and sit behind the bank of microphones, and come here to make excuses.