With Age Comes Wisdom.....Maybe

Everyone has their own area of expertise. We all feel very comfortable in a familiar environment or sharing our knowledge on something we think we know everything about. And, although, we all should know that we are not experts on absolutely every subject, many have a hard time admitting to that.

My son called me the other day to say he thought he might have trouble keeping a good grade in one of his classes. He doesn’t like to get less than perfect grades because that would be a direct indicator that he does not know everything there is to know. Then he would have to face his know-it-all mother, who would remind him that she knows more than him and now has a report card to prove it.

I asked if he had the classroom schedule where he could tally how many possible points he had until the end of the course. He couldn’t find the schedule, but he did have the schedule on what nights his Asian friends cooked fried rice for the dorms. I asked if he had the professor’s schedule as to when he was available for consultations or homework assistance. My son couldn’t seem to locate that schedule, but he did have the jujitzu schedule posted on his wall right next to the TV line up for UFC fight-nights with Chuck Liddels appearances highlighted in yellow.
Sighing, I told him he might want to shift his priorities. Obviously he had great knowledge on how to locate some great Won Ton Soup and how to best fine tune his jujitzu skills, but was having trouble with knowledge of how to best open a Physics book.

Then I came home to find my daughter cramming to finish her homework. She was wailing that she hadn’t realized that her project was due so soon, and how did her teacher expect her to remember all these facts. I reminded her that she should have written the homework deadline on her calendar that so meticulously documented each gymnastics class and class trip. Also, highlighted in red was each night the Penguins would be on Fox Sports, and she could recite all the goals scored, assists, and penalty minutes of probably 80% of the entire NHL.

Memorizing statistics did not seem to be a problem. Memorizing a homework schedule and statistics for cellular mitosis didn’t seem to take priority over what days were sale days at Abecrombie and who had enough points to make the playoffs. I sighed again. With age comes wisdom as to what is most important and where one’s knowledge is best placed.

So my husband and I were out of town for the weekend and had to get from our hotel to a restaurant nearby. Being very familiar with the city, we knew exactly where to go and how to get there. Climbing into the cab, we instructed the driver as to the name and address of the restaurant. We both sat confidently back, knowing that the cab driver could not fudge and drive us in circles. It was only about a five block drive, we were just too tired to walk.

The cab darted off with my leg barely in the door, and the cab driver wove in and out of traffic as he kept up a heated conversation with someone on his cell phone in some foreign language. We realized he was going way too far up the street. My husband hollered that he was going the wrong way. The cabbie seemed agitated at being corrected and hollered something back at us and continued his jumbled up conversation with the person on the phone.

After about three more blocks we hollered again that he was taking us the wrong way and he screeched to a stop. In his very strange language he yammered that he knew where the restaurant was, he could not get around blocked off streets, and he was not taking us the wrong way. We could get out right there.

We scrambled out of the cab and stood on the dark, rainy street as he squealed away babbling out his window as he left. I even managed to actually understand quite a few of the verbs he threw at us along the way. But as we turned around and began to walk the 20 blocks back to our destination, I realized that even though we obviously had great knowledge of the city we were in and I had great adeptness at understanding profanity directed at me in multiple languages, possibly, the best knowledge of all would have been how to choose a good cab driver and not manage to get thrown out along the way.