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If I were Bill Clinton I would still be denying the Monica Lewinsky affair. If I were the Catholic Church I’d still be insisting that the Earth is the centre of our universe. The only time I ever hold my hand up is when I’m dancing to Ottowan’s Hands Up, Baby hands up, baby your heart gimme, gimme, your heart gimme, gimme.
I hate admitting I’m wrong.
Here are two examples.
The summer after my first year of university I mentioned to my uncle I was looking for a job. My uncle, who owned a local snooker club, picked up the phone and within less than a minute I had a job there behind the bar. On my first day, everybody was lovely apart from one lady who made it clear that she thought this was the biggest, most terrible case of nepotism since Tori Spelling got a part in Beverly Hills 90210. (I would have used a more up-to-date reference but it was 1994.)
This lady was one-third brandy, one-third perfume, one-third hairspray and she 100% hated me. For my uncle getting me bar work in a snooker club just off the A13. She could barely even look at my nepo-baby face. When I didn’t know what a lager top was she acted like she was working for a newly elected Chancellor who’d never heard of the Budget.
Because it was a snooker club, a sport that when played professionally, bewilderingly requires a bow tie, I had to wear a smart white shirt and black skirt. One day, this lady said to me in a particularly spiteful vice, “Is your shirt supposed to be like that?” I replied it was, just thinking she was being mean about my clothes.
I realised a short time later she meant there was quite a big bit at the back that had come untucked. If you’re envisaging some kind of stylish French tuck situation, stop envisaging now. Once again, this was 1994 in a snooker club just off the A13 in Essex. The French tuck had not yet arrived. And more importantly, it looked more like I had a tail. Or wanted to look like I had a tail. It looked ridiculous.
But I couldn’t bear to admit this so I left it like that for the whole shift and just pretended that yeah, this is just how I wear my shirts. Deal with it.
I was on holiday in Majorca. It was a hot day and I had stopped for a cold drink at a café with outside tables in a lovely sunny town square. I really fancied a sweet drink and I thought what I’d like is an old-fashioned lemonade. Lemon, water, sugar and lots of ice.
About ten years before this, I’d lived in Mexico for a year and thought that my ‘getting by’ Spanish was okay. So I confidently told the waitress that I wanted a limon fresco.
She stared at me for a bit and then repeated it back to me. “Si”, I confirmed, “Limon fresco.”
Her response to this was to say the word ‘no’ several times and then in English, “You mean a lemonade?”
But no, I didn’t want a lemonade. I didn’t want clear fizz. I wanted a still, fresh lemony, ice-cold old-fashioned lemonade.
I was also a bit put out that she’d spoken to me in English when I felt like I’d displayed such verbal dexterity with my Spanish. So I insisted again, “No, limon fresco.”
She gave me a look that said you can’t possibly want that. And I was starting to waiver a bit and wonder if I’d ordered the right thing. But I couldn’t back down now as I’d look like a fool so I just said again, “Si limon fresco.”
Five minutes later I had in front of me a half-pint glass full of freshly squeezed lemon juice. No water, no sugar, no ice. And all I could do was say, “Perfecto” and take a sip.
The undiluted juice hit my mouth and it was like she’d gone inside and quickly genetically modified the lemon to make it 3000 times more bitter. It was not just straight lemon juice but the most bitter straight lemon juice that has ever entered my mouth.
She pushed the little bowl of sugar sachets towards me but I just smiled and carried on drinking this lemon juice that did not feel a million miles away from drinking pure sulphuric acid. And I had to drink it all.
It was so acidic I had holes in my mouth for the rest of the holiday. But still, it was a lovely drink, very nice, just what I wanted. I wasn’t wrong at all. Oh no.
It’s said that being able to own your mistakes is a sign of a strong character. But I wonder if it doesn’t take even more strength to keep asserting you’ve done nothing wrong.
I’d rather that waitress thought I had an insanely abnormal palate than I was really bad at Spanish. I chose this option. It also happened to be the option where I wasn’t admitting I was wrong. But I don’t think that makes me weak. (I’ve got a long list of other things that clearly demonstrate my mental weakness if you want one.)
With the snooker club lady who hated this nepo-baby, I’d rather she thought I was an unhinged fashionista than didn’t know how to get dressed. This was preferable. And sometimes this is fine and not necessarily signalling a fragile ego.
It can look slightly insane if the evidence to the contrary is overwhelming. I might draw the line then. But still, if I were Bill Clinton, I’m sorry but that surely must’ve been just yoghurt on Monica Lewinsky’s dress.
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And also, tell me…
About any times you’ve dug your heels in and refused to admit that you were wrong.
About any consequences of poor foreign language skills.
About the most inconsequential time you’ve been a nepo-baby.
After my sophomore year of college my sister got me a job in a law firm because I thought I might want to become a lawyer. The job was removing the staples from documents so they could be microfilmed. It took half the summer. When we were done we then had to staple them all back which took the other half of the summer. I did not become a lawyer.
"the most inconsequential time you’ve been a nepo-baby" may be the beginnings of my favourite list ever. I got a job as a 13 year old at my step mum's florist shop. It was for the Valentine's Day rush and I stood in a freezing storage unit, removing the thorns off roses stems. I was so cold I sliced the top of my thumb off about four hours in to the shift and only realised when I started looking around to see who the growing pool of blood on the floor belonged to. That's how frozen my fingers were, I didn't even feel the chopping off of my own thumb top! But, I got that job because I knew my dad. So, Nepo- baby' for sure.