Baldo by Hector D. Cantú and Carlos Castellanos for October 07, 2010

Think about which people in the world who keep the world moving in some semblance of order or, at the very least, can say their lives are happy… yup, it’s the smart ones.

Nora is on target. Being smart is great. Being a pedantic know-it-all is just another form (albeit mild) of bullying - making others feel badly about themselves in order to make oneself feel superior. Constantly correcting others can be very off-putting, and Gracie might want to listen to her friend.

cdward, being a pedantic know-it-all can be a form of mild bullying, but there can be more to it than that.

Speaking as an aging nerd, myself – never fully recovered, after all the decades, from the purgatory of middle school and the hell of high school – it might be the only thing you’re good at, so you trot it out whenever you can to feel the least bit competent. (If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, right?)

Or it could be an actual compulsion for accuracy – a deep and personal dread that someone, somewhere, may be incorrect about something, and the universe will have an itch it can’t scratch unless it’s fixed. (That must be fairly common…why else would there be so many bloggers on the Internet, or posters on GoComics?)

Or, of course, it could be just a relatively harmless form of being a pretentious jerk. I guess my point is just that everyone has their reasons, however annoying to others they might be at times.

And yes, I do appreciate the irony that this post makes me Exhibit A. :)

Poor Gracie! She has bags under her eyes!

better to say the wrong word around friends who gentle correct you than saying it around in a gathering of people who will just laugh and call you stupid. Good job being a great friend Gracie.

But but but but but…. If someone was saying something incorrectly, surely they’d WANT to be corrected, so as not to continue making the same mistake! Right…?

Right…?

(crickets)

If you had spinach stuck to your teeth you’d want to be told, wouldn’t you?

SCAATY_423 - I think you’ve done an excellent job of analyzing the motivation of people like myself. I used to always think like fritzoid’s comment, because I would want people to correct me. It wasn’t until after I was married, that I discovered not everyone wants to have their faults pointed out so they could correct them. (Although, at least by that point, I had learned to reserve my corrections for close friends, family or behind people’s backs.) The easiest way to find out if the person doing the correcting is a jerk, is to find out how they react when people correct them. Do they get upset, or are they grateful? If it is something they can’t change, do they laugh at themselves, or do they plot retaliation? I’m of the opinion that I’m not infallible, I just have some strengths that others may not have. I’d rather laugh at myself, than to get upset because people may have found out that I’m not perfect.

Personally I don’t mind being corrected if I’m mistaken about something, but I hate it when people “correct” me when I’m actually right. If I’m only 90% sure my information is correct, I’ll say something like “Well, my understanding differs from yours, but I’ll try to look it up.” And if it turns out I WAS mistaken about a factual question, I try to acknowledge my error… (If I was right, though, I don’t go out of my way to say “I told you so.”)

Ah, the joys of uncertainty! Are we being helpful or are we being jerks? SCAATY_423, I appreciate where you’re coming from, and sadly have a compulsion to correct grammar. I have a difficult time suppressing it but do so for the higher good.

Having said that, there is a difference between the smart kid bubbling with joy at learning and knowing so many new things, and the kid who uses his or her superior knowledge to intimidate other kids. My position is that this kind of intimidation or belittling comes from the same emotional place as your average bully.

It’s also my contention that the milder forms of both types can be addressed successfully so that the perpetrators can grow into healthy and kind adults.

I would prefer to be told that it is not a “smart alex” or a “chester drawers” or that is not the correct way to pronounce “impetigo”, and so I correct (as gently as I can manage) but I do probably come off as a smarty pants, know-it-all, jerk on occasion. Sorry, everyone!