How many of us think we know more than we really do? We mean well but our actions sometimes fall short of their good intentions. I know it happens to me.
The first time I bought into my employee stocks some years ago they were going at $4 a share. Later they shot up to nearly $20 and $26 a few days later. I was being coerced into selling them immediately. I said, “When they hit $30, I’ll definitely sell.” They didn’t, instead plummeted to less than $2, never to rebound. I should have listened. A few years ago, there was a penny-stock that I believed was on the fringe of surging but not according to others I knew. Rather than listen, I put money into it and waited to fulfill my dreams. Two years later I cashed in, getting a return of 20 percent of my investment. Never again!
I smirk when surveys show single men not having anywhere near the amount of sex we think they are. For every Ryan Gosling in ‘Crazy Stupid Love’, there are scores more that are going home from the bar alone, whose unique come-on lines are fired into a bottomless abyss without so much as an echo. However, listening to these macho guys, we might have thought they had more dates than they could handle.
As a teenager, I can’t forget the first time I telephoned a girl for a date. I was so puffed up and sure of myself. She answered and I said, “How about a movie Saturday night.” She replied, “I’m busy Saturday night.” I said, “What about the next Saturday.” She replied, “I’m busy every Saturday.” That hurtful rejection stayed with me until I learned that I wasn’t rejected, it was my request for a date that was. It still hurts a little.
A friend of mine had worked in India for a few years. This one day she had to take the infamous train from New Delhi to a nearby city. When it arrived, the women’s car was so full of women exiting the same door as getting on. She said she even helped push a struggling woman onto the car itself. To her surprise some women glared at the one she helped. She later discovered that those on the train were ‘working women’ and a higher caste. How could she have known!
I too had an issue with transportation but it wasn’t a train, it was my car. Returning to Toronto from Fort Erie I hit a real bottle-neck of traffic around Mississauga. It was stop and go with more stops than goes. I was behind an ambulance, fortunately not one in an emergency situation. Unfortunately, I was so weary after a hectic day that I drifted off and bumped into the ambulance. In a flash a woman paramedic on the passenger side was at my window motioning me to open it. I wish I hadn’t as she gave me the worst dressing down I ever had. “How dare you run into an ambulance. What if there had been a patient on board.” And so on …. Finally, the traffic started moving but at the next stoppage the driver got out this time and waved his fist threatening at me. Now when I see an ambulance I pull over even when it’s stopped.
However, there are a few things that still have the experts stumped, like hiccups and why they happen, or moths being attracted to a flame. Regarding colours; what’s to say one person’s image of green is the same as another’s? Not much, and it turns out that science really isn’t sure that we’re all seeing the same colors in the same way.
I look at it this way: I think I know more than others do but if I’m right 51 percent of the time then I’m ahead of the game.
