Sean’s very sorry, all the time, about everything. Even if he had nothing to do with whatever went wrong, he’s still very sorry about it. There can’t possibly be a more apologetic person on the face of the earth.

Barb and I have tried to figure out where all this guilt comes from, but so far it’s beyond out powers to decipher it. Besides, from where I sit, it’s just about impossible for just two mere mortals such as we to ever provide as much guilt as he constantly feels, even if we concentrated solely on him. As it turns out, for our guilt trips to have any effect we have to dump twice as much on Tim these days as we ever did before, as he builds up immunity. Even when it does have the desired effect of getting him off his butt, Tim is already a master at turning the tables to make sure everybody knows he thinks that whatever it wrong must be our fault, not his, and he’s doing us a huge favor by taking care of it.

Turning the fire hose on Tim cuts pretty deeply into what little guilt we can supply to Sean, not that he’s any less humble for it. He’s a canary in a coal mine when it comes to reacting to the smallest, simplest guilt trip, and will immediately set into fixing whatever went wrong, with his head bowed, dead sure that it was all his fault. He’s more than willing to let everybody know it was his fault, too.

It’s been said that guilt is a double-edged sword, but in Sean’s case it’s nothing so refined as a keenly-honed blade. It’s blunt trauma with a thick club, and that’s the way he likes it. He would’ve made a great Catholic if he’d taken that route, but if we tried to steer him that way now he’d only be disappointed.