I consider myself an above average intelligent person but sometimes I do awfully stupid things.
Yesterday I parked at a meter, read it carefully before putting in my money but chose to ignore the tape wrapped around the base of it that stated "no parking between 4 P.M. and 6 P.M. because of rush hour traffic. It was 5 P.M. and there wasn't much traffic so I foolishly thought it would be okay to park there anyway. How dumb can one be? It cost me a $50 fine.
I've noticed that I tend to translate events into what I want them to be and not what they actually are. Is it just me or do other people do that, too? A few years ago my sister-in-law, Faye, and I were travelling back from New Brunswick on Hwy 16 West. At one point we noticed the road signs showed we were on Hwy 16 East. Did we stop and find out how we'd gone wrong? No! We laughed about how the stupid department of transportation had erected the wrong signs and we continued on our way...until we spotted the next one and decided it was possible it was us who might be wrong.
It's the same with the way we look at people. We want to take them at face value and it's shocking when we find out they weren't the kind of people we thought they were. Too often we ignore the signs until we're forced to take a closer look.
Anyway, I'll pay the parking fine and accept the fact that I'm not perfect, and even a little stupid at times.
2 comments:
I didn't help - I'll blame that on jet lag - but the OTHER sign on the meter read "$1.00 an hour until 6 PM" and the tape was not prominent (we did, however, notice it and chose to listen to the more primary sign because that suited our purpose better!) I say "Fight it" but look where my advice has gotten you thus far! :-)
the first time i took al home to meet my parents , the fight unexpectedly stopped in quebec city. when we got off the plane and were walking to the treminal i said to al "look they are so trying to please quebec, that they've changed the name of the fredricton airport to quebec"
duh!
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