I’m not a huge fan of being wrong. You’re blown away at what a unique person I am, I know. Most people just positively adore being wrong. I’m a real one-of-a-kind hero. Put my face on a coin someday, but make sure it’s front-facing because I’ve never been a fan of my profile.
In the meantime, since minting coins has a rather spendy start-up cost, just go ahead and put coins on my face. Sacajawea dollar coins or GTFO. Don’t cheap out – it’s the holidays!
You know what, though? My skin is super sensitive, and coins are just about the dirtiest thing on Earth besides your weird uncle who likes to hug me way too long and says stuff like, “Wow, you really grew up if you know what I mean,” so you can just go ahead and put the coins directly into my bank account, along with all of the rest of your money, electronics, and jewelry. This is a stick-up!
I honestly can’t believe you didn’t see that coming from a mile away. Situational awareness, people! You should have taken the advice of the, frankly, passive-aggressive victim-blaming posters at the mall parking lot that say, “Don’t make yourself a victim!”
Certainly, nobody likes being wrong, but I feel like I aggressively don’t like being wrong, if that’s a thing? I’m sure that’s a thing. It’s probably the “thing” that puts a lot of people in prison. Or law school.
My typical response to being told that I’m wrong is blind rage. You would never know it because I keep it tucked safely inside, but just know that when someone points out that I’m wrong about something, mentally this is what I want to happen to everyone in the world right at that second:
I never act on my blind rage because, obviously, I can’t go to prison. They make you go to the bathroom in front of other people in prison, which means that I would never be able to go to the bathroom again. As it is, I can’t go if I suspect another human (or one of those sensitive dogs who looks like he’s really thinking) is within a ten mile radius. If I were to act on my blind rage, I would go to prison, never go to the bathroom, swell up like a tick, explode, and die.
Nobody wants to die that way in prison. Everybody wants to die valiantly and poetically in prison, after being shanked in the yard over a stolen pudding cup. At least that’s how I’d want to go.
“She died as she lived, fighting over pudding that didn’t belong to her.”
I’ve had to find creative ways to stuff down the blind rage for as long as I can remember, so when someone tells me I’m wrong, I will often turn to a solution like quietly leaving the office and walking to my car, screaming at the top of my lungs and punching the steering wheel, and then quietly walking back into the office. How else is a person supposed to deal with making a typo and then having someone point it out?
“Hey, Maggie, I think these letters are transposed.”
“Oh, are they?”
Walk outside, scream, punch, walk back inside, fix the typo. This is life.
I assume a lot of people do this in the car, at least from time to time, or else more people would be using public transportation. The entire reason that I own a car is so I have a private place to freak out when needed. I call it my “Feelings Booth”. What do you have a car for? Getting around?
Feelings Booth aside, I think the most creative (and on-brand) way I’ve ever dealt with the whole “being wrong” thing was when I was 8 years old, arguing with my sister Bonnie about what all kids argue about: Hall and Oates song lyrics.
It seems Bonnie believed the title to the song “Some Things Are Better Left Unsaid” was “Some Things Are Better Left Unsaid”.
That would make her correct, in case you think you’re just seeing things. No need to re-read that sentence.
I believed the title was a different line in the song and that it was “Some Things Are Better Left Undone”.
This was pre-internet and none of us owned the album, so the only way to settle the matter was through a third party. That would be my sister Julie.
I went to discuss the matter with her alone and she said, “Actually, I’m pretty sure Bonnie is right. It’s “Some Things Are Better Left Unsaid”.
I felt the rage swell inside me, took a deep breath and said, “Okay. If I give you a dollar will you go out there and tell Bonnie that it’s actually “Some Things Are Better Left Undone” and that she’s wrong?”
Julie said, “But she’s actually right. You’re the one who’s wrong. You’re willing to pay me to tell her that you’re right, even though we both know you’re wrong?”
I pulled out the dollar bill and said, “One. Dollar.”
She took it and said, “You’re an idiot,” and then marched into the other room to tell Bonnie she was wrong.
Of course, I just looked up the lyrics now (yay internet) and saw that the line I was wrongly trying to argue “Some Things Are Better Left Undone” is actually “Some Strings Are Better Left Undone”, so I wasn’t even right about the line to begin with, let alone that it was the title of the song.
I’ll excuse myself to my Feelings Booth now.
