You're not right just because you said you were

I don’t imagine many people enjoy being wrong… but having grown up in a house where adults never say they’re sorry or admit to wrongdoings, I’ve made it a point to admit to my faults. I don’t do it for any magnanimous purpose, I simply don’t want anyone ever likening me to those people.

You’d think that saying you’re sorry would be something meaningful, but it isn’t always. Take my eleven year old, for example. He says he’s sorry all the time, though I think he’s actually sorry that he got caught or sorry that he has to listen to my scolding. Understandable. He is, after all, only eleven.

I apologized to a friend yesterday. I was in a bad mood and something I read on his Facebook page set me off. I posted a comment about it, which I thought was pretty mild, but another friend took up the gauntlet and away we went pecking at each other. In the end I realized that while my gripe was legitimate, the manner in which I chose to handle it wasn’t and so I apologized. You’d expect an honest apology would be well met. You’d be wrong.

The situation continued to denigrate throughout the day and this morning, I ended up blocking both friends. Pretty sad, eh?

I love that Facebook reconnects us with old friends, but maybe there should be an instruction manual that includes a section on how to balance who you remember people being with whom they’ve become. I haven’t seen either friend in over 20 years and remember them both as being talented men with great senses of humor. They’ve grown up to be cantankerous old farts who like to grumble about the government and behead (figuratively) anyone who disagrees with them.

Interestingly, most people I run in to after 20 years comment on how I’m pretty much the same person, perhaps a little wiser, definitely a little heavier, and still in possession of the sense of humor I’ve always been known for. That’s nice to hear. But not everything is as it appears.

One change is that I’ve gone to college and actually just received word yesterday that my request to continue working on my Masters will most likely be granted. (Excellent news, but I digress.) My studies in Communication included coursework in Argumentation, very much like debate, where you are taught how to successfully argue and also what constitutes an effective argument. Turns out, as I suspected, saying things like “Yeah, well, you’re ugly” is considered a poor form of argumentation, no matter how satisfying it is to yell.

I am thinking of this because during the course of yesterday’s kerfuffle, twice I was accused of saying something I hadn’t said. This was odd because both accusations were of the “poor me” variety, an area I try to avoid arguing from as I’ve been taught it’s a place of weakness, but mostly because our argument was in written form so it was clearly in black & white that I had not said those things.

At one point, I was even accused of trying to make myself out to be the innocent party with no part in any of the blame… If that’s how I felt, why did I apologize, I asked? The answer was that I must have felt at fault, which I was, and that no one else had any reason to apologize. Hmmm. Really? Not even for making negative and false accusations at me? I see. Okay then. BLOCK.

Perhaps blocking friends is extreme and perhaps, too, I’ll get over it and take the block off. But first I would share one bit of advice: never argue with someone who has been professionally trained at it, unless you have been too. Not only are the trained taught to argue above board and in facts, they are also trained to recognize people who argue from places of weakness.

If you argue from weakness, you won’t stand a chance, even if I’m the one initially at fault. As soon as you lower yourself to arguing emotionally, I’ve won… even if I haven’t.

Here’s another bit of advice, if you ever get the chance, take Argumentation! Imagine if we all conducted our differences of opinion with maturity, facts, and mutual respect. Holy crap! We might actually start settling things amicably!

But in the meantime, we soldier on… and you know what? My friends are ugly!!! Well, their arguing styles are, anyway. (LMAO!)