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A lesson learned

Sometimes the best way to argue is to say nothing at all.

Last week, when I was enjoying a lovely morning walk with one of my favourite neighbours, I was drawn into a very interesting conversation with someone my neighbour knew.

It was a curious thing, as I did not bring up politics, nor declare my affiliation with any one party (I don’t have one).

However, this man who began the discussion of politics, began declaring my love of the New Democrats, because I disagreed with his statements (perhaps had it still been the 1950s, he would simply have called me a communist or a radical hippy, I’m not sure).

Now, for the record, I really have no love of the provincial New Democrats, which is the first party he was suggesting I was so fond of, and then it became the federal NDP, and while I respect Nathan Cullen, our local federal NDP Member of Parliament, I was not previously a person who voted NDP federally either.  He was also equating the two parties, which seemed ridiculous in my opinion, as the provincial party is quite a bit different than the federal one, but as you can see, we disagreed on many things.

It was an interesting study in human nature, as he grew more angry, and as I continued to put forward points which disagreed with his statements (I did not want to agree with what I believed were falsehoods), he demanded to know my age.

When I told him, this immediately became grounds for his being correct and my being incorrect. He was over 70 years old.

Interesting, I had no idea age could automatically make everything a person said to be a fact.

I look forward to those days, as it will eliminate so much of the background work I have to do in reading and looking up facts or references or phoning sources in order to produce articles. If someone knows the threshold of this age thing, please let me know so I can take advantage of it immediately upon reaching the “Age of Correctness.”

Or whatever the technical term is.

His parting advice for me was to study some politics.

Interesting, that is what I thought those university courses were talking about and these past years of journalism. But perhaps my professors and journalism instructors had not yet reached the “Age of Correctness” or maybe I was in the wrong classroom.

I’ll have to let my instructors know so they hold off telling anyone any more of their “facts.”

The truth is, no matter your age, it is  perhaps wiser to continue on enjoying the company of a fine neighbour, and even when political statements are being made, at times, a fine morning can be far better off with silence than discussions of facts someone doesn’t want to hear.

Lesson learned.