The Kindness of Humor in a Correction

"You may not be able to change a situation, but with humor you can change your attitude about it."
~ Allen Klein

One of my colleagues sent me an email recently.  It began, "Not to freak you out or anything..."  She went on to tell me that in an email I had sent to another colleague, I had written to the woman using her last name (which could be a man's name) as her first name.  That is the kind of thing that I feel very badly about, but because my colleague began her email the way she did, I actually burst out laughing.  And then I wrote to the person whose name I had botched and apologized.  I was doubly grateful to my colleague -- thankful for the correction as well as for her humor, which I found contagious.