We had a debate tournament coming up a few weeks after my
dinner-not-date with my friend and when I was writing my speech she
asked if I wanted to come over and have dinner with her family and
practice on them after we ate. I am so arrogant that I thought I
would be giving them a little treat to hear my after dinner speech. I
took her up on the offer and it was pleasant evening. Until I got to
give my speech. Her mom and dad sat on the couch to listen to me hold
forth in my hubris laden self-important teenage wisdom. They were
super polite and made their faces to look like they were really
interested. I was riding high based on a misreading of the effect of
my performance on them. When I was done they asked if I wanted some
feed back I said yes and they ran down a mental list of errors,
omissions, and grammatical errors that I had made and told me that
they also did not agree with my premiss. I recall specifically that
there was a line at the end where I mentioned several dictators, a
list I had supplied off the top of my head. I listed Lenin, Pol Pot,
Pinochet and Karl Marx. If you spotted my error then shut up your
face, I know where I went wrong now. I remember them correcting me
and feeling humiliated because I had always fancied my self the
smartest person I knew and it was becoming demonstrably evident that
I was not even forth smartest in this group of five. That took me
down a peg or two and I did make several of the changes that they
suggested but I think it made me prefer preforming for people who
were just confused by my convoluted ramblings and not an audience
that by all appearances was quite a bit smarter than me and cleverly
tactful so as to throw me off the trail.
