Being right takes scores of time. It requires me to backtrack to just about everything I've read in a blog, book, review, article or on AOL's homepage, or seen on the History Channel or TLC, trying to piece together where I picked up a tidbit of random trivia that I found interesting enough to drop into a casual conversation only to have someone say, "That's not true. That doesn't make any sense." As if I'm making up crap on the spot to mislead a person into a state of stupidity. This, of course, drives me crazy. Why? I don't know. Maybe because I'm insecure about my education. Maybe its because Miss Teevan told me -- in front of my entire Italian I class -- that I wasn't smart enough to be a lawyer or because Sr. Bernard Joseph used to mock me -- for four school years -- whenever I made a spelling mistake or because Mr. Guarino accused me -- in front of my entire 6th grade class -- of being a cheater when I got a math test right because I had gotten so many wrong. (Teachers, ladies and gentlemen, can really fuck with a kid's sense of self.) So, for years now, I've done my best to prove to the greater world that I'm not stupid. That I'm actually smart. And I would pound you into the ground with my big brain if it took two hours on Google to retrace my every step and footnote my every argument.
Quite frankly, all this has been exhausting. And because it's exhausting, I'm trying to let it go. Afterall, Miss Teevan and Sr. Bernard Joseph are both dead, and Mr. Guarino left teaching. I have mean and evil things to say about all these people, but part of letting it go is (*grumble, grumble*) forgiveness. That last part will be harder than the Google research, I'll just admit that right now. But not as hard as giving up the habit of being right. That's a killer. This morning, as I started to compose an email argument -- with supporting links! -- to a person who refuted my factoid during our casual conversation last night, I realized that I just had to stop. First, because the email was starting to read like something from a post-grad cognitive science research paper and secondly, I wasn't going to get any vindication or even validation. All I was going to get was one of the three responses I typically get: 1) The person will say, "that still doesn't make sense." Which will make me nuts. (2) The person will say, "yeah, I got that email but it was too long to read. What did it say?" Which will make me nuts. (3) The person will say, "I don't even remember talking about that." Which will make me nuts. (Are you seeing a pattern here?) What I have never gotten is a simple, "Huh. That's interesting. I'm sorry I doubted you. You were right." And I realized mid-email that I wasn't going to get that this time around either. In fact, I'm pretty sure I would have gotten response #3. So, I deleted the email.
When I'm done with the eraser board information -- the items have been picked up at CVS, the address has been copied into my address book, the dream no longer feels relevant -- I erase the writing and wait for the next info emergency to arise. So, in this tradition, I'm going to erase the Google research on facial phenotype. Because even though no one else might know that I've proven myself, I've proven myself to me. I know that I'm right. And that's got to suffice. So, suck it, Sister B.J.! (Sigh. I'm still working on that forgiveness thing...)
1 comment:
LOL. Oh my gosh, the character in my latest read for ya totally had this complex. I too suffer from it as well. To combat it, I just stop hanging out with people who disagree with me :)
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