New Use For Facebook: Apologizing To That Guy You Mugged Three Decades Ago

from the there's-an-app-for-that dept

If all you did was pay attention to headlines featuring everyone’s favorite/most-hated social network, you would think that all Facebook was good for was being confusing about hate-speech, giving the government as much information about yourself as possible, and apparently being directly responsible for suicides. However, now that we’re knee-deep in yet another holiday season, the hallmarks of which are consumer-on-consumer taser violence and having to argue with your crazy uncle over various family dinners that Barack Obama and George Bush Jr. probably aren’t lizard-people from the planet Fascism here to steal our freedoms and freshly harvested apple pies, it’s time that we had a nice story to warm the cockles of all our hearts.

This story of holiday cheer and goodwill towards all peoples begins auspiciously, with one man mugging another man for his bus pass on the steps of the American Museum of Natural History. That was over three decades ago, however. More recently, the mugger, a Michael Goodman, happened to come across his victim on Facebook.

“You may not remember this,” Goodman wrote Soffel in the comments underneath the post, “but a long long time ago I walked up the steps of The Museum of Natural History one afternoon, trying to look like a tough guy to [somebody] & saw you standing there at the top of the steps, I walked up to you & (mugged) you for your bus pass. Finally I can say,” he continued. “I”M VERY SORRY that you had to go through that crap that day long ago, I wish it had never happened but it did.”

Claude Soffel, his victim, was every single bit as gracious as Goodman was contrite, responding directly to the Facebook post.

“Michael A. Goodman, clearly your a “bigger man” today. wow. Memory is a funny thing, I recognize your name now, as well. So, apology accepted. Interestingly, I have dedicated a large portion of my life to helping other men be the man they have always wanted to be, and moments like this one continue to fuel my faith that the battle may be uphill but so rewarding. Any man who draws aline for himself, “Today I step forward for myself, my family, and humanity” is a hero to me. So let us now, jointly, put this in its proper place, behind us.”

Please try to remember, in a day when you will hear a lot of noise about how people never connect any longer, never talk, or don’t regard one another as human beings: technology is what you make of it. Social media can bring us together in amazing ways, as this once perp/victim combo shows us. And, damn it, be nice to one another this holiday season!

Filed Under: apologies, social media
Companies: facebook