Size Doesn't Matter

I made a mistake today. I forgot some information and made a public comment on the internet that might have hurt some people I don't know very well while they are going through a rough time. I might never have known but another stranger contacted me privately and, extremely kindly, gave me all the right information.

Before we go on, I'm not looking for advice. I did what I'm comfortable with and I'm sticking to it. I thought it'd be a good conversation to have so I offer it up for discussion.

The way I see it I had two options. Ok, three if I we want to allow for me being a complete asshole.

1. Asshole option, do nothing, leave the comment up and either not care about hurting someone or hope that they'd write my hurtfulness off to ignorance.

2. Delete the comment and, either publicly or privately, contact the people I hurt and apologize. If you know anything about dramatic arc you know I didn't choose this. My logic here is that I don't know these people well and bringing up the gaffe again is just poking them in the bullet wound to clear my conscience. That's all very well for me but it's not much for righting a wrong.

Here's an example on a much, much smaller level. A couple of months ago, for the first time in my whole life, someone mistook me for pregnant and congratulated me. Obviously we were both embarrassed. I even said, "Oh no, I'm just fat." Everything I said, though, was in the service of shutting down further discussion of my weight and childfree choices. The other woman, after apologizing, brought up the incident no less than three separate times over the course of the evening. Every time I had more trouble shutting her down. Clearly she felt that, since it was out there, we should talk about it to normalize it whereas I, regretting the slight fashion risk I'd taken, wanted to not think about it anymore and just point myself to the end of the night when I could bury that dress in the hamper.

3. I deleted the comment and said nothing. I wasn't comfortable leaving it out there in the world where, even accidentally skimming the thread, it could cause more sting. I'm not stupid enough to think that this soothes any hurt I already caused but at least it can't cut again. If it's on the radar of the people in question, and it might not be, they have way bigger fish to fry right now, they'll know I'm aware of my mistake and I'm sorry because I deleted the comment. I won't forget I screwed up. I'm usually better than this but nobody's perfect. I'll have to try not to do it again.

Really hard.

Now for the discussion part. What would you do? Have I missed any choices? Feel free to give examples.

Thanks for hearing me out.

*I include this photo because it was an enormous fucking mistake. After a morning of lapping up gross puddle water Bobby was wildly sick. He's better now, though. Not sure he's going to learn from it.