Maggie and I had some down time on Sunday, what with NHL is Dead to Me gone. We decided to pool our resources and head to Atlanta's Ritz-Carlton for high tea.

By the way, it is very hard to dress an elephant appropriately for high tea. I was wearing my snazziest hat and pair of shoes with sweatpants and a shirt that read "Pu-Tang: For Real". They let me in without much fuss, but Maggie was a different story. She insisted in staying in her footie pajamas, but I did convince her to don a hat, earrings, and some gloves. After a minor fuss, we were seated.

During the consumption of scones, I noticed something was quite wrong with Maggie. She wasn't bleating in her normal way. In fact, she was plain giving me the cold shoulder. I knew I had done something wrong.
"What is it, Maggie?" I asked.
She harrumphed at me, and her sad elephant eyes looked teary. She pulled at my very heartstrings.

After some sweet tea with milk, she confided in me that I had hurt her feelings on the computer. I had put some posts up about a group of people who are very vulnerable and alone, and I had made fun of them. She said this was the very kind of thing that got feelings hurt. She likened it to her ancestors being preyed upon for ivory and such. I didn't quite see the correlation, but she managed to convince me that my words were quite hard to read and un-fair.

I tried to explain to Maggie that I have a really cynical sense of humor; that by way of protecting myself from getting too involved in painful situations, I tend to mock them. It is a defense manuever of a three-year-old, yet I persist in using it.

Maggie bleated a little and said it was time for me to grow up and think about what I say before I say them. She was right, you know. Too many people talk without understanding the wieght of their words. It's started wars, in the past.

I apologized to Maggie, and I apologize to the rest of my readers. I hope that you will be able to see that I mock things in a cynical way rather than getting to the heart of the matter. When I started tearing up at the Ritz with guilt, Maggie put her soft trunk around me and told me she forgave me. That was a relief. I can only hope the rest of you forgive me, as well.