I TOLD YOU SO

I hate to say I told you so.

How do I say I told you so, let me count the ways.

I appreciate that you should be allowed to save face and that gloating becomes no one. Gloating would be wrong. Gloating would be a mistake.

Quite possibly, it is sometimes necessary to say I told you so. For the record, perhaps. Just between you and me. It's not like I'm going to publish it in a letter to the editor or anything. Just a little nudge to get past the impasse of our mutual refusal to acknowledge the situation, that I told you so and that I told you so way, way in the past, long long ago.

I told you so a long long time ago. I told you so in the very beginning. It could very well be that if I were to say I told you so, it would initiate another round of your frantic rationalizations. You might try to argue and wave your arms. The agony would be prolonged again.

And would it really make any difference? At this point? The wise thing for me to do, I guess, would be to remain silent and carry on.

Or would you perceive my attempt at tactfulness as being smug? Would you read a smirk between the line of my closed lips? Maybe you would see it as weakness.

I could whisper behind your back, I told you so.

"Did you say something?" you would turn and ask.

"No," I would say. The germ of doubt would be planted, of course. We would look into each other's eyes and tacitly acknowledge the truth, that I indeed had told you so. We both would know full well -- at the moment of my barely perceptible whisper -- that I had told you so. You already know I told you so. I know you know I told you so. We are pretending I didn't tell you so, I know.

If I were to say I told you so, you might become sarcastic and call me the Oracle of Delphi and never speak to me again.

Other people are losing their jobs or worse, it would seem, as a result of all this. They're starting to drop like flies. I'm sorry.

Maybe time could be shifted, fractured into cubist bits of memory, as happens in the movie Deja Vu starring Denzel Washington, which really was a lot better than the reviews claimed. Or Memento. We could walk backwards and forget. Or Alain Renais' Muriel, which I watched just this morning on my portable DVD player while taking a drive in the country. Maybe we can mix things up and I wouldn't have told you so at all. We could distract each other. Neither of us would remember if I had told you so. Everything would be the way it was before I told you so.

Now I really wish I hadn't said a damned thing. It's awkward. They always say that on television, when truth bumps heads. "Awk-ward." People on the soundtrack think it's funny.

I don't want to be like the driver who insists on his right of way, fully aware of the semi-trailer running a red light in the intersection in front of him and yet he proceeds to barrel through because his own light is green. No insurance in the world covers "I told you so."

Clearly, there would be repercussions if I told you that I told you so.

I wouldn't want to say anything in bad taste. We regret to inform you that I told you so.. .

It's not like I was the only one who told you so. Most everybody did, now that I think about it.

Even so, I'm not going to say I told you so. I've decided not to.

I could say, I can't say I blame you, but I just can't.

Everything will be fine. Someday, we both will look back at all this, and you will turn to me, and you will tell me why you had to be so fucking stupid, and I will simply nod. I won't say a thing.