6/24/11

"It's not you, it's her."

So this morning, Bossman snapped at me over something trivial. Understandable, seeing as how he'd just finished off a fairly busy night, and had a bit of a rough morning, navigating the privations of Unnamed Party Superstore on 14th to buy cartloads of aluminium trays for a catering order that's coming up.

He's also been frustrated with a mutual (mutual to me and him, that is) acquaintance. She's been grating on him for the past couple of months, and early this morning, she kind of pushed the wrong button at the wrong time.

Add to that the fact that it's been steadily (and blessedly) raining. While the temperature has been absolutely lovely, it has been a twitch wet out. All these things end up adding up to a perfect storm of annoyance, which manifests itself in ways that are unintended.

A lesser man would have let it go at that point, and pretended it never happened.

Bossman, however, is not a lesser man.

A certain unnamed child whom we all know and love had an Incident at school, where the teacher humiliated him in front of the whole class (again, over something fairly trivial), and made said child cry. When confronted on it by Bossman, she responded politely, but curtly (which is completely out of character to the warm, kind woman she'd been all year), and pretended like she never did anything untoward.

This is what's typical of most people.

It's really close to the end of the day (or what I hope will be the end of the day; it's been a rather long one), and he said, "It's not you, Dino. It's her." I knew exactly what he was talking about, and then we both laughed and moved on. That's what's typical for Bossman.

I feel like as I live longer, I learn more and more. There's nothing wrong with admitting that you might have been in the wrong. In fact, sometimes, it just takes admitting it to immediately seal any unintentional (or intentional!) wounds. Why? Because so many of us are so scared of being wrong that we would rather lose the person than lose that iota of pride.

However, I must disagree. You don't lose pride, or face, or anything else when you admit to something. You gain dignity. You gain the gratitude of the person who felt the slings and arrows (small though they may have been). You gain the knowledge that at the end of the day you /were/ right.

You were right about being wrong.

When I left home, and struck out on my own in New York, I did it in such a way that left my mother with hurt feelings. "Why didn't you tell me, so I could help you?" Not "why didn't you tell me so I could stop you". It was a sticky time. Fortunately, I ceded to her, and said, "What's done is done, and I'm sorry for that. What can I do to make it right?" "Come visit me in Connecticut."

Done.

I took frequent visits up to my sister's house in CT, and enjoyed myself tremendously. My mother and I grew ever closer. She moved to Arizona a couple of years back, but we do still keep in touch. I don't want to even think of how badly it could have gone, had I insisted on being "right".

I chose to be with the person.

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