Have you ever had to deal with a person who at times likes to ask questions that they think they know the answer to, who are asking just so they can pan your response and show you that they know more than you do, even when they don’t?
Believe it or not, there are a lot of people like this in the world. I happen to have a few friends who are in this category. For obvious reasons, they are not what I count among my closest friends, but except for those times when they get that itch to provoke, we get along okay.
Here’s an example of what I mean.
My friend and I were walking one day, when we passed a mulberry tree. Now, my friend had never seen a blackberry bush, and mulberries and blackberries are similar except the former grows on trees and the latter on thorny bushes. When my friend commented that we should ‘pick some blackberries,’ and I pointed out that they were actually mulberries, an argument ensued. I was accused of being rude and not knowing what I was talking about, because my friend had seen similar trees bearing blackberries on several occasions.
My mentioning that I grew up in East Texas where blackberries grow wild, and had spent much of my youth picking them from the ‘bushes’ for my mother to make blackberry pie, fell on deaf ears. I was accused of peddling a false narrative just to embarrass my friend.
Now, one of the things I learned long ago about dealing with prickly, defensive people—and, in my opinion, people who do things like this are insecure, defensive people—is that it does no good at all to argue with them. The more you argue, no matter how solid your evidence is, the more defensive, and eventually testy, they get. I’d forgotten that sage advice in this instance and proceeded to try and explain the difference between blackberries and mulberries. Just kept digging that hole deeper and deeper, until my friend’s cheeks started turning red. Credit me with an ounce or two of common sense.
At that point, I realized that arguing was just making things worse. I remembered the old dictum, ‘when you’re in a hole, stop digging,’ so I apologized, said something along the lines of I might be misremembering—even though I knew that I wasn’t—and brought the temperature back down to just chilly. With this kind of personality, I’ll take chilly ignoring to heated argument any day.
I let a few days go by, and then went on line and found as many labeled photos of blackberries and mulberries as I could find, along with descriptions of each, and I made sure they were web sites that my friend knew and trusted. No sense being accused of peddling fake news. I put all this information in a nice email, and without mentioning the previous argument, instead just saying ‘I thought you might find this interesting,’ and sent it off.
A few days passed without a response. Then about two weeks later, my friend and I were walking and we passed a mulberry tree. Here’s what was said.
“Those mulberries look ripe enough to pick,” my friend said.
“You’re probably right,” I replied. “Want me to pick some?”
“Do you know how to make a mulberry pie?”
“I never have, but it’s probably the same way you cook a blackberry pie,” said I. “Of course, we could always make mulberry wine.”
“You can’t make wine from mulberries,” my friend said.
Now, I’ve had mulberry wine. I had a friend who loved to make it at home. Did I mention this? Not on your life. Instead, I said, “Oh, I suppose you have a point. It was just a stray thought.”
The rest of the walk was in peace and quiet. And that, my friends, is how you deal with an insecure person who has a prickly, provocative personality. | NWI
