About to reverse the car in Braehead car park, but two people from the car next to ours were standing behind exchanging views in a frank and robust manner. I waited patiently as is my wont, but though both were animated and moving back and forward, they didn't move away from behind the car – which made it difficult to reverse.
Eventually as I moved the car slowly and almost but not quite imperceptibly backwards (had it been imperceptibly they wouldn't have noticed, would they?), they eventually noticed my desire to leave the vicinitypreceded by the necessary reversing manoeuvre. My window was down and I could hear there was some disagreement about whether their car was locked. He tried the doors – they were locked. She tried the boot – it too was locked. But who locked it – and when? Huh?
At which point the wife of the driver delivered the almost unanswerable put-down:
"Well, ah didnae see it!"
Followed by the answer which I suspect came from long practice:
"Ah well! It couldnae have happened then, eh?"
Two thoughts occur as a comment on this mini-episode of soap opera – one human and humorous (same semantic ancestors) – the other a wee bit more, well, metaphysical.
The husband's reply made me wonder if he was thinking of the variation on the old epistemological question – If a man expresses an opinion in a forest, and there is no woman to contradict him, is he still wrong?
OR to balance the gender roles and avoid stereotypes – If a woman expresses an opinion in a forest, and there is no man to contradict her, is she still wrong?
Whoever was right or wrong, they were still going at it – 20 feet apart, when we were leaving the car-park.
The more serious and intriguing question arises from how we know what we know – and how we can establish who is right or wrong if two people have different perceptions of things. If 'ah didnae see it' – could it have happened?
Possibly, but how would I know? Well, if you told me and I trusted your word. Uh Huh – but what if it's an argument and it matters to both protagonists who wins said argument? Well then it depends on whether my desire to hear the truth is more important to me than loudly proving you wrong.
There's something important lurking in this line of thought that might help to deal with those breakdowns in communication, which become breakdown in trust, and then breakdown in relationship, which slides into those irretrievable breakdowns that inflict the kinds of hurt that can't be easily sorted. Why is it, that on certain occasions not easily predicted, it becomes so important to be right, and for the other to be so demonstrably wrong they have to admit it? And such due deference feeding the ego of the one who wins a low grade argument by losing something more valuable! Such episodes tend to have a lengthy and potentially toxic half life.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm?
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