Talking about the hard edges

Unlearning "well actually."

I made a mistake talking to my neighbor the other day

The power went out when a few of us were in the local tap house of a weekend afternoon. Power outages are not uncommon here. We live on a vulnerable leg of the power grid; we can get taken out by a wayward car finding one of the poles next to the single road in to our community.

Thankfully, the bartender was willing to serve us all another round despite the register not working.

It opened up the conversation between the half dozen of us, as a shared inconvenience will do. I discovered that the older couple at the bar lived on the corner just before my place. They have old chipped lawn statues of deer. The silhouette of a rack of antlers in my peripheral vision always causes me to cover the break when I drive by.

I jested with them that I resented their deer.

We rambled about what to do and got to know each other a bit. Then I made my mistake.

My neighbor said "it would be a bad day to have one of those EVs."

I should have grunted and said nothing, but I started in with the most damning phrase.

If you say this phrase to someone, the smart ones will disengage from you and walk as far away as they can. The dumb will put on their verbal boxing gloves and get ready to spar: "Well, actually."

"WELL ACTUALLY I wish I had an electric car today. I could run my house off of it."

Thankfully my neighbor disengaged. I hope we can still be friends in the future.

I believe that I did better when I was talking with a friend visiting from Portland who suggested returning land to native people who felt connection to it.

I just responded that I think a white family that had been working a bit of earth for three or four generations feel a connection as well. After a beat we changed the topic.

It would be best for general social agreement to just stay silent in all these situations. Finding myself between value systems and communities, disagreeing with both my conservative neighbors and my progressive friends, well-actuallies come to my mind like I am a precocious fourth-grader on a field trip.

So being in disagreement is my challenge. When should I grunt back a non-response that keeps conversation easy? When should I speak my mind?

I have a lot to learn, and when I watch people who are invested in community, I gather that it can be done.

So, neighbor, sorry that I well-actuallied you the other day. I hope I can rib you about your lawn statues next time we find each other at the tap house.