I am Growing as a Person

There’s a great line in Neal Stephenson’s book Cryptonomicon where he says that for a certain kind of person, any statement of fact by another is an implicit challenge – coming with the unspoken epilogue “...and you didn’t know that”.

I’m afraid I don’t know the precise wording of the line or whereabouts in the book it is – I actually read it, rather than Googling for quotes. Nevertheless, for me it sums up perfectly a very widespread human trait which, until I saw it set down in print, I was aware of but not quite able to put my finger on.

I used to be one of those insecure people who always felt the need to assure interlocutors that I already knew whatever they were telling me, as if I was in some way diminished or belittled by not having known every possible piece of information anyone else might happen to know.

Yesterday, I realised that I had overcome this particular weakness - finally breaking out of the sleep, homeostasis, excretion layer of the Maslow pyramid. 

I was unlocking my bike and getting ready to set off home, when someone shouted across to me that they were surprised to see me riding a scooter and that they had assumed I would be riding something bigger.

Now, this is fair comment to a degree. I do tend to dress like I riot policeman. My defences are:

1. It’s cold and body armour is pretty warm.
2. It’s usually raining and body armour is pretty waterproof (only, of course, if one wears the trousers).
3. If I come off my scooter at 30mph or Valentino Rossi comes off his Ducati at 30mph, we are both going to get pretty badly messed up unless we’re wearing protective clothing.

So anyway, this guy – who also had a scooter – starts talking to me about bikes and matters bike-related. I go along with it because, hey, we bikers have to stick together, right?

Several minutes later, I realise that this person is just regaling me with every single fact about motorbikes he has ever heard.

And many of his assertions are COMPLETELY WRONG.

I can’t remember all of them, but specifically he insisted that it was legal to ride a 250CC bike on a CBT. Which is simply untrue. I should know, because I had to retake my bloody CBT not ten days ago (you have to do it every two years unless you upgrade to a higher category licence).

By this time, I was not only wondering what it is that makes apparently normal people burst forth with incontinent logorrhea to complete strangers who have been fooled into making eye contact with them, but also fighting back an irresistible urge to argue with him.

Had I not been wearing body armour I might have been less willing to engage in conversation – let alone controversy – with an unknown, potentially knife-wielding party. The temptation to say “I don’t think that’s right” was strong...

Reader, I conquered it.

I realised that the quickest route out of the conversation was to say “really?” and go along with it, even though I knew it was incorrect – and even though it gave the impression that I did not know something.

I really am growing as a person. I wished him "the best of luck" four times before I got away, but I did eventually get away. 

Oh I found the quote:

Your younger nerd takes offense quickly when someone near him begins to utter declarative sentences, because he reads into it an assertion that he, the nerd, does not already know the information being imparted. But your older nerd has more self-confidence, and besides, understands that frequently people need to think out loud. And highly advanced nerds will furthermore understand that uttering declarative sentences whose contents are already known to all present is part of the social process of making conversation and therefore should not be construed as aggression under any circumstances.

I Googled it.