"Mind your own business!"

I'm not sure if I have a need to be right...but I certainly enjoy being right. Not necessarily at the expense of harmony or at the expense of other more important things. And perhaps more than I like to be right, I dislike it when people state things with incredibly certainty that I know are wrong.

Some of the time they say it with such certainty because they really believe it to be true. Some of the time they say it with such certainty because they think it might be true, and want to mask their uncertainty with extreme confidence, as if they are daring someone to disagree. Some of the time, they say it just to make people angry.

Now, obviously I can hardly disagree with the occurrence of the first sort. Well, I could, but that would entail requiring two scholarly and one popular source(s) [minimum] to back up each statement coming from people's mouths. Slightly ridiculous.

However, the latter two instances are pet peeves of mine [as a side note, I hate the phrase "pet peeve" and just the word "peeve" in general]. Let's examine some situations in which I've encountered these unpleasantries in the recent past:


The blatant misinforming with confidence is something that occurs frequently in my father's company. Usually in the form of mispronunciation. Annoying, but not as much as this....


Scene: A hypothetical group of students are sitting in Ket rec watching the ALCS game 7. It is currently a commercial. I am in the front row of viewers and the following conversation is hypothetically taking place behind me between two guys I don't know, who hopefully don't read my blog...I will refer to them as "1" and "2."

1: I saw the rugby world cup last weekend on TV.
2: Oh, really? That's cool.
1: *rambles on about how cool rugby is, then...* It's like a combination of soccer (he may have said football), hockey and lacrosse.
Well, sort of. maybe. I guess it's like hockey. Because both sports have players. And in both sports people get shoved around. And rugby players have sticks and glide around on ice....oh wait! That's not true at all.
2: Wow! Seriously?
No.
1: *Sounding increasingly knowledgeable on the topic*yeah...it's pretty intense. They kick the ball, and throw i--
2:*interrupting* yeah, but they can only throw backwards?
1: Well you're not allowed to throw forward. You only throw backward. But it's crazy. Not only can you run the ball in, but at any point in the game you can kick the ball through the goal posts and score a field goal.
First of all, your friend just said that they only throw backwards, which is the same as never throwing forward. Second of all, how is this idea of kicking the ball through posts a new concept? "at any point in the game" Yes. At any point where you're actually close enough to actually make the kick.
2: Is there one player who is in charge of kicking?
1: yeah, yeah...there's one position who just kicks the ball every time...it's..uh...it's called the fly-half. Yeah *fully confident, now* the fly-half.
First of all, multiple people kick the ball throughout the game. In fact, any player could kick the ball. I'll give him credit for the fact that "flyhalf" is an actual position. But they aren't even necessarily the person who ends up kicking the ball the most...

It is in times like these where I desperately want to break past the barriers of politeness. I want to chime in with my five cents...or maybe my twenty cents. I want to tell them all of the ways in which they are wrong. But there's no reason to do so. I know that. I know that telling them the rules of rugby would be rude and probably induce swearing. That's why I didn't do it. I resist this temptation a lot.

Just sitting in the SAC, overhearing pieces of conversations that are taking place around me, I hear more and more people discussing things, missing important details. Missing my opinion. Ha. I sound so arrogant. Whatever. I don't actually think that they would benefit from my input. I guess the point of this post is just to say that there are many times that I wish I could say things that would very rightly warrant a "Mind your own business, *#$(%&!"

But I don't. My life is full of small victories.