A Look On The Lighter Side: So, who’s atoning now, I might ask?

“Honey, you’ve got to hurry up!  If we’re late for services, I’m blaming you!”
After much commotion, my husband and I are finally dressed, in the car, and on our way to morning services for the Day of Atonement.  
While he drives, I scribble on a note pad from the kitchen counter. 
“What are you doing?” 
“If you must know, I’m making a list.”  
“Okay. Don’t forget we need milk, paper towels, toothpaste ….”
“Oh, not that kind of list.  It’s a list of all the people I’m going to forgive — for Yom Kippur.”  
“It sounds like Step 9 of Alcoholics Anonymous: ‘making amends’.” 
“A little bit, yes … except that these are all people who really should be making amends to me.”
“Like who?”  (My beloved tries to peek onto my pad of paper.) 
“Hey, keep your eyes on the road!  Like that clerk at the pharmacy.  You remember, when we were just getting refills and it came out to almost four hundred dollars?  And when I asked if she’d remembered the deductible, she said Yes, she’d added that on.” 
“I remember.  Then you went ballistic, yelling, ‘It’s called a deductible because you deduct it!  That means you subtract it from the total, not add it on!’” 
“I said all that?” I was dubious.  
“You were pretty hungry, as I recall.”
“I thought you were the hungry one! That’s the only reason I gave up our place in line — so we could go to that deli!”
“Yes —well,  it was the only way I could think of to get you out of there, and calm you down.  And it worked, didn’t it?”
“I don’t know what you mean.  At least the clerk seemed to get a lot smarter after lunch.  She was able to explain that it was just early in the year and we hadn’t met our deductibles yet….”
“So she’s the one who got smarter, after you ate lunch?”
“What’s your point?  Anyway, I forgive her.”
“Let’s hope she forgives you, too. Who else is on there?” 
“Well…there’s you.”
“Me?” my husband’s voice shoots up.  “What did I do?” 
“Remember how I gave you my car’s registration sticker, when it came in the mail?  And now time’s running out and you’ve lost it… But I don’t know if I can forgive you for that.”
“The way I remember it, you said you didn’t trust me with it.”
“I said no such thing!”
“What you said was, ‘There is no such thing as a safe place, so I’m going to put it in my purse.’ ”
“Oh, yeah?  Then why isn’t it there? I’ve looked and looked and I’m warning you.… “ My voice trails off while I rummage in the purse one more time.
“What’s that there?  With the corner sticking out of the inside pocket?”
“Oh.  That.  It’s nothing…” I hurriedly zip my purse shut. 
“I knew it!” he shouts, triumphantly.  “It’s the registration sticker, isn’t it?”
“All right.  I guess you didn’t lose it, after all.”  
“I forgive you,” he says. 
“But I’m still upset with you about the hooks,” I tell him. 
“Those ridiculous hooks, on the back of our bedroom door?  Judy, sweetie, I keep telling you —  They are your hooks. All but one.” 
“But I only use one of them, myself, for all my things; I’ve been leaving the rest for you. So who uses the two in the middle?”
“Don’t you remember? By the terms of the Great Hook Treaty of 2009, we agreed that those were all yours.”
“Oh.  But then… all the towels on those middle hooks, they aren’t yours?  But they aren’t mine either!  And all this time I’ve been wondering when you’d get around to washing them, while my things got damp, all scrunched on one hook, and I had to buy a new bathrobe…. No. I’m not forgiving you.”  
I cross my husband’s name off the list, but scribble a few more things on my pad. 
“I think God will know the truth about this, Judy.” 
“Maybe.”  
“So …now…are you forgiving me?” 
“Yes.  For being insufferably right!”
“And I forgive you for being so silly.” 
Happy New Year!