Before I apologized, Hipster Man was the guilty party. Sure, the fault was minor—an unintentional aggression; a miniscule distinction—but it was indubitably his. But the moment I apologized, that changed. I watched absolution play across his face; I felt condemnation sweep across mine. My apology made his transgression my own.

Post-conflict, sitting on my excellent Swan Boat real estate, I feel that transgression filling my body. I am suddenly aware that, without making a conscious decision to do so, I have squeezed myself into the furthest corner of the bench. My legs are crossed. My arms are pressed tightly to my side. Every inch of my posture screams apology.

The products of this incident are unimportant. It doesn’t matter that I took responsibility for a goofy situation. It doesn’t matter that Hipster Man claimed the better seat. It doesn’t matter that I wedged myself against a railing when I had an entire bench. The details of the apology don’t matter.

But the origins of the apology do. Why do I apologize? Why do I concede? Why is it my reflex to assume that I am sitting on someone else’s bench?

I can’t decide which element of my identity is most to blame.

It might be my status as a woman, and the years I’ve spent with the conditioned knowledge that the only thing worse than being a pushover is being a bitch.

It might be my roots as a Canadian, and the combined effect of every “polite,” “easy-going,” “not-to-be-taken-seriously” stereotype I’ve come to embrace as compulsorily my own.

It might be my generation as a Millennial, my future as a humanities concentrator, my past as a dorky “smart girl’ at a public high school.

It must be some combination of all of these things, because I’m certainly not encapsulated by any single one. And somehow they’ve combined to produce some kind of eternal guilt trip, some kind of whispery internal voice that tells me incessantly to take up less space.

I don’t think I’m alone. In fact, I suspect that a lot of us fall to the back of the line. I suspect that a lot of us squeeze into our seats. I suspect that a lot of us are too often sorry.

I look at the back of Hipster Man’s head. He is peaceful. I turn my head and look down the length of the red metal bench. It is empty. I straighten my back, plant my feet a little further apart, and use more of my bench.

I feel powerful—and not sorry at all.

Laura E. Hatt ’18 is an English concentrator living in Kirkland House.