Being Right is Not Always Nice

This morning a service man came to my house to do some work. As happens to all visitors at my house Shay Shay was right there at the front door to greet him. As she did her poorly-trained dog routine of jumping up on him to say Hi the tech said, “no problem, I love dogs.”

That was no excuse for Shay, but the tech pet her and she calmed down enough. As he was petting her very soft coat he asked what kind of dog she was. I told him she was a labradoodle and he got very excited. “I thought so. Can I take a picture of her to show my fiancé?”

I agreed and he went to to tell me that he and his newly intended had just had a big fight the night before about all doodle dogs. She contended that any doodle was half standard poodle and thus all doodle dogs were big. Shay Shay a lean twenty pounder just comes up to you knee proving that something other than a standard poodle was in her genetic makeup

The tech was so excited to be right. “I’m going home for lunch with her right now and show her this picture.” I asked him how long they had been engaged and he told me two weeks. “It’s nice to be right, but be careful about how you say it,” I cautioned him.

After he left I got thinking about how when I was younger I reveled in being right. When I say younger I mean like last year and before. It has taken me a long time in life to learn that there are often many correct answers to the same question. Learning to see the gray areas and appreciate nuances is a skill I had to learn.

I think that being the oldest child of two oldest children makes me someone who was used to being more right than wrong. It was easy as a child to be right when competing with much younger siblings. Admitting I am not right comes easier to me now, but was a long time coming.

Sometimes it is great to be wrong, especially if you think the stock market might go down, but still hold on to your investments. Being proved wrong there is a happy thing. Or if you think a young person is stretching a long way to apply to a certain school and they get in. Hooray for being wrong.

But those examples do not involve one person being right and one person being wrong. Gloating over being right is an unattractive trait, especially if it is someone you love. Learning grace and humility are life long lessons. I wish this service tech well in his life with his new wife, if they get that far. Winning an argument over a dog may not be worth it, but then again if he learns the “it’s nice to be right, but it’s better to be nice” lesson on a dog story it might be the cheapest way to learn that lesson.