Head of the Pig

I come from a long line of extraordinarily stubborn people. My grandfather was perhaps the pater familia in this department... the man had a quadruple bypass at the age of 60 and managed to live another 30 years, most likely out of sheer stubborness.

A recent example from my own life: I was so convinced that my husband had failed to get Tide detergent even after I had carefully printed it on the grocery list. He insisted it wasn't on the list. So, I went out to the big trash can in the garage and went through it bag by bag, piece of crap by piece of crap until I found the list. Just to prove to him that I had included it and he had failed to procure it anyway. It wasn't on the list.

As I've grown and matured a bit, I've become a bit more willing to admit when I'm wrong. Oh, it doesn't happen often; I am nothing if not overwhelmingly correct 99.9% of the time. But in the aforementioned incident, for example, I actually brought the grocery list into the house and admitted to my husband that I may have had a slight oversight. In the past, I would have stuffed it into the bottom of a banana peel and claimed I couldn't find it but was still secure in the knowledge that I was indeed correct. As always.

This pigheadedness was undoubtedly a contributing factor to the demise of some of my earlier relationships. That and my past predisposition to dating complete assholes.

Even though I've made vast improvements in this department, I still find it difficult to admit when I'm incorrect about something. My tongue tends to swell a little and become cottony. My mind has trouble seizing upon certain pertinent words (e.g. "I" and "was" and "wrong").

So, in the spirit of self-improvement...

I may have been a bit hasty in my previous judgement of the novel "Twilight". Oh, there is little doubt that the first 177 pages of the book are pure crap. But on page 178, Ms. Meyers seems to have wrested control of the keyboard from her 6-year-old and actually started to write the book using the English language and at least an 8th-grade writing level. The story has become intriguing, suspenseful, complex... I get it now. I get The Phenomenon now.

I admit this because I would hate to deprive someone from this reading experience simply because I might possibly have been a bit hasty in my judgment.

Let us never speak of this error again.

Now, I will continue my life of perfection. Thank you for reading.