02. Accusation

Once upon a time, many many many moons ago (ok, perhaps not quite that long ago) back when I was a cute little kid in my first year of primary school I was accused of saying the word 'bitch'. Now, I was one of those doe-eyed kids who thought the whole world was made of daisies and chocolate, and I'd never even heard the word before so I didn't really have an idea what it was that I was being accused of. 

This girl who was accusing me went and told our teacher, who came storming out of our classroom and demanded a confession out of me. My goodness was this woman terrifying. I must admit, I kind of question the judgement of the school officials who hired this woman. She'd just returned to teaching after having a miscarriage. Of triplets. The poor woman, I don't remember her being a very cheerful person. I definitely can't blame her for that.

I digress. What I'm obviously trying to tell you is, she was flipping scary, man! She might as well have been breathing fire out of her nose, I was that scared. (She did have red hair... perhaps she was secretly a dragon). All the screaming resulted in me confessing to something I hadn't done and didn't even have the potential to do. I remember being late to library because the teacher took me to her office to tell me off some more and good grief, as if you make me late to library. I love books!

It all resulted in my parents having to go in and see her and it all eventually was sorted out but this situation, and many others like it, make me think. 

These days, we're so very ready to accuse. We're also always unbelievably ready to accept negative accusations about people, or just negative things in general. 

If two people were to come up to you separately and one of them complimented you while the other told you they thought you were a horrible human being with pig breath and a big nose, you're probably going to be more likely to believe the person who had something incredibly negative (and incorrect, you don't have a big nose!) to say about you. A typical example of this that I've noticed is when someone commends someone else on their excellent penmanship and the writer always tends to say "Oh this? No! That's so messy!" We, as humans, seem incredibly unable to accept that someone may actually be saying something nice to us simply because they believe it to be true. I mean, why would someone lie to you about something nice? Chances are, they aren't lying. 

And you know what? Even if they are, at least they care about you enough that they want  you to believe something nice about yourself! So either way, it's a win for you, you wonderful person you!