Raising Hands and Purple Strips: Thoughts on “The Art of Admitting the Wrong Thing”
Found this old blog entry beneath my growing pile of bibliography assignments. Thought I would still post it though. Maybe someone who reads this can learn a lesson or two. I know I did…
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April 4, 2008
(The night is still young and the
room is not as cold as it has always been during the winter. I’m still
wearing my black gown from the worship concert, and typing this while
eyeing the big blue bowl of ketchup beside my laptop…)
I’ve
always had problems in admitting I am wrong. I get defensive,
emotional, guilty, and humiliated when accused of doing it. Most of the
time though, I am caught red-handed and the feeling is just
overwhelmingly embarrassing.
I will not even try to defend
those times I admitted ‘defeat’ graciously, nor the times I was wrongly
accused. That of course is a different story, which I will probably
write on one of my gloating moods.
The thing is not being wrong,
but I think that I’m always right. Not only when I’m a customer, or
when I’m trying to exercise my gender powers. I will always be right,
no matter what.
So I found it a little irritating when the choir
came to a consensus that when someone sang something wrong, one has to
raise his/her hands high up in the air. Duh. What kind of stupid,
little rule was that? Why parade my mistakes to other people? For me,
raising a hand is a polite way of saying I want something and I don’t
blurt it out anytime I want, or maybe getting all emotional with a
certain song or speech, or when I want to be recognized with a group of
people and that I am a part of that certain unit. But raising hands to
let people know, “Hey I messed up my notes” won’t just work for me.
Besides, I don’t mess up my notes.
Yeah, right…
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If
anyone is ever interested to work in the Music Materials Center, I am
telling you, find another job. The place is literally a minefield of
little odd jobs designed to make you feel stupid and wrong all the time.
Oh,
the first two weeks are always harsh. THOSE weeks will always be
riddled with traps lurking in the books shelves. This is my first-hand
experience of being the newbie: all the other workers will stop
shelving and I get to shelve carts and carts and carts of scores, cds,
lps, encyclopedias, anthologies, monuments, hymnals, and historical
sets everyday. Not only did paper cuts become my best friend but I get
to climb the ‘flight of shelves’ where books are squished tight, and I
won’t have the strength to push and pull, especially if stepping on an
8-foot high skinny platform. This is also the time where I need to
seriously ponder on the alphabet and chronology, which for many a time,
baffled me.
Then, there’s the case of the trusty purple strip.
Every book to be reshelved should come with a purple strip inserted in
it. This means only two things, (a) to let others know that I passed
first grade and that I shelved it right or (b) I was either asleep in
Math and English class that I didn’t know that S was after R or that 3
was after 2. In most cases, I would do it right. Of course, I should
shelve it right. What’s bugging is when I shelve it wrong, I would be
corrected by the shelf checker by pulling the book a little out of the
shelf, making the purple strip stick out prominently, as if to say, “My
shelver is very stuuuuuuuuuuuuupid!!!!.” Nope, the checker won’t tell
me my mistakes. I am left to venture the shelves on my own, and
refigure it all out.
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Come
to think of it. Humiliation is inevitable, and people around me seem to
embrace it, admit it, would stand corrected, and apparently move on
with their lives, hopefully a better person.
Then there’s me who
would sulk, disapprove, hide, turn a deaf ear and defensively say, “I
am right all along. Your system has the problem.” I don’t necessarily
get away with it, but when I do, it adds another trophy to my shelf of
pride and self-righteousness.
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Have
you ever noticed that ‘proving someone wrong’ is more used up than
‘proving someone right’? Actually, I always prove someone right—-ME!
Yup, my mind seems to always brush cheeks with omnipotence.
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You
might be wondering why you are wasting your time reading about these
gloating anecdotes on the author’s self-righteousness. Truth of the
matter is, I know I needed to admit this or I will never change.
In fact, aside from admitting and publicizing my faults through this
blog, I went (and is still going) through the humiliating process of
being corrected without feeling robbed of a shining, polished identity
by raising my hands in choir practice (which I do now every so often),
hunting for shoot-out purple strips among the stack of books, and
saying that “I’m sorry, I was wrong” mantra which used to haunt me for
a long time.
Amazingly, the feeling is better.
