I don't know about you, but in my lifetime, I have been wrong just about every way that a person can be wrong. It seems that my vision is 20/20 when spotting les faux pas of others, but all too often I am completely myopic in this regard when it comes to myself. In this brief two-part series, I want to relate two recent anecdotes where folks missed their most blatant of mistakes. I term these the "flavors of wrong". I have fallen prey to very similar circumstances. I shared the first story yesterday. Let me now tell you the second story.At the end of a recent day at work, I got into my car and started the drive home. To exit the site, I have to wait at a traffic light in order to turn onto the main road. The light stays green for its cycle and then there is a cycle where it presents an arrow to allow for right turns. Those on the main road also have a green allow that allows them to turn into my work site or make a U-turn to go back on the main road in the other direction. However, there is a large road sign directed at those on the main road that states in bold letters, "U-turn yield to right turn". In other words, when I have the green arrow, I have the right-of-way to turn onto the main road. Anyone executing a U-turn must yield.
However, when I came to the green arrow and proceeded to make my right turn, a pickup truck pulled up and wanted to make a U-turn and they had no intention of yielding. I kept going, which forced them to hit their brakes abruptly. The pickup truck then pulled up next to me and the three men in the cab all gave me the finger and began shouting obscenities at me. They broke the law, were clearly in the wrong, yet all three of them thought that I was a bad driver who deserved their rebuke. All of them were completely clueless about their flavor of wrong.
Why is it that we have eyes to clearly see things in others that we cannot detect about ourselves?
(Note that both of the stories that I highlighted in this series occurred on the same day. I had been thinking about a way to write about this concept of being wrong when these kind of dropped into my lap more or less together. Ultimately I couldn't choose between the two.)
(Part 2 of 2)
