I believe the time that we question ourselves on "how many stories do I not know" is when you are sitting at a funeral. They are speaking lovingly about the deceased, and you are trying to figure out, "how did I not know that?". I just love eulogies. It seems it is the one and only time that a person's life is shared in such detail. I come away from every funeral I attend saying, "I didn't know that". Many times, it is because they are acquaintances and of course you don't know everything about them. But there are times when I'm at a family funeral and I think, where have I been? Did I grow up in another family? How did I not know that? I start to wonder "how many stories do I not know?". I am always impressed with people who are so good at remembering details. They can repeat a story word for word. I remember Dad saying, "I don't want to repeat a story because I don't remember all of it and I would get it wrong...
I have always felt that as Canadians we use the word, "sorry" in excess. But it was during my recent shopping trip to Giant Tiger that I thought, we apologize for things way more than we need to. The store is very tight with lots of merchandise, meeting another cart means you must maneuver to get around each other. All, I could hear was a steady stream of "Sorry" as we all tried to get out of each other's way. Saying "sorry", just flies out of our mouths especially when we are in each other's space. It is more of a way of being polite than being sorry, because that is what we do in Canada. This is a perfect example of how apologetic we are. I was out walking when I saw a woman backing out of her driveway. She was looking the other way and just kept on backing up. She never looked my way, so I just waited for her to back up. When she turned and saw me waiting for her, she went into a state of shock and mouthed "I'm sorry" many time...