I probably did it - It was probably me
Years ago, my friend Camille Calabrese was a public defender for Lake County Illinois when she told me about a client that she had.
“The kid was caught on video robbing a jewelry store but he kept saying, 'I didn't do it. It wasn't me.'” she said. “The cops had the kid dead to rights, but he felt no guilt about it whatsoever.”
“Was the kid Italian?” I asked.
“No.”
“Was he Jewish?”
“No. And you are asking why?”
“No reason,” I replied. “Just wondering.”
Actually, the kid's guiltless attitude spoke volumes because he would never feel that way if he was Italian or Jewish. He just would not.
According to researchers cited in the National Library Americans reported that they had more than reasons for their guilt feelings, and they are not above passing those feelings on to their children and grandchildren.
For example, my late husband Phillip had a Jewish mother, and we knew firsthand that all the jokes about guilt and Jewish mothers were spot on.
However, she factored minimally in his own inflictions of guilt.
That's because he was not only a religious convert (he embraced Catholicism when he was in his 20s), but he was a naturalized US citizen as well.
As a result, there was no Catholic holiday nor patriotic celebration that Phillip did not observe with gusto. Anyone else's failure to follow suit was in his opinion Godless and ungrateful for the plethora of American opportunities.
But neither Phillip nor his Jewish mother could hold a candle to the guilt dished out by my Italian-American mother and her three sisters.
Those three women - all the daughters of a gentleman artist from Tuscany- could make a person feel guilty for even thinking about something they would deem inappropriate such as wearing white after Labor Day or not using a linen napkin at every – even the most casual- meal.
In fact, I probably spent most of my life doing things for which I could never be made to feel guilty.
Among the biggest sins was failure to invite every single member of the family to even the least significant of events. The mission here was to make sure that no one ever felt left out or slighted by the rest of the clan.
As a result, in my adulthood I invited everyone to everything.
I in turn was invited to everything. I remember wishing people would just leave me off the invitation list in exchange for my promise that I would never, ever feel left out.
It never happened so I had to attend these even non-events or risk being plagued by guilt feelings for months afterward.
Things are different now.
No matter what the National Institutes of Health says, not much that engenders guilt feelings in anyone these days. In fact, there is no shortage of memes or affirmations reminding people that there is no reason for feeling guilty about anything short of cold-blooded murder.
I read 'em, but I'm still guilty about missing people's birthdays, not sending Christmas cards to people who send them to me and about neglecting to phone them – you know, have a verbal conversation – at least once every week.
That's because I still hear the voices of my mother and my aunts, my late husband and his mother every time I don't.
Some things are just eternal, I guess.