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A guy at the office was passing around a quiz designed to test observational skills. The questions were about objects that you see every day. For example, one question was, "What color is at the top of a stop light – red or green?"
The next question was, "How many sides does a stop sign have?" I answered it out loud. "Eight," I said. "Nope!" responded the guy who had handed me the test. "There are five." Now I was pretty sure about this one, but, still, I’m one to check my facts. That evening, on the way home, I looked at all the stop signs I passed, and each one of them had eight sides. The next day at work I confronted my newfound friend and said, "You know, I counted the sides on actual stop signs and they all had eight." "No. You’re wrong," he said. "Count again." I took a piece of paper and a pencil, and I drew a stop sign for him. "You’re drawing it wrong," he said. Another person looked over my shoulder and said, "No, a stop sign is longer than that. There aren't that many sides." My friend walked away with a smug look on his face. I swear to you this really happened. The quiz-giver's sense of authority and conviction left me questioning myself. Had I counted wrong? Maybe I was in a hurry driving home. There was no way I was going to leave this alone, so I went to my dictionary and looked up "stop sign." It said, "The stop sign is used as a traffic control device in many parts of the United States. It is a red octagonally shaped piece of metal with a white outline and the word ‘Stop’ painted in the middle. If the word octagonal is too big for you, it means, having eight sides. That’s EIGHT, like an octopus with EIGHT legs! No more. No less. If anybody challenges you on this, be sure to make a big deal out of it." That’s what it said, right there in Webster’s. I went around the office and verified with several people that a stop sign does have eight sides. Even though they agreed with me, most of the people I asked looked at me kind of funny as though they were wondering what I was up to. Back at my computer, I printed a clipart picture of a stop sign and numbered the sides one through eight. I carried it over to my number-challenged friend, showed it to him and said, "What am I missing here?" He looked at the picture as if puzzled and then said, "Oh, you’re right. I must have been thinking of something else." I felt as if there were nothing I could say to him, except maybe, "What else? What in the hell else could you get confused with a stop sign!" Unable to rectify Mr. Quiz Man’s initial overbearing confidence with his understated concession, I again went around the office repeating this story and making fun of the situation. That was until somebody pointed out that stop signs do, indeed, have five sides: the left side, the right side, the front side, the back side, and the outside peripheral edge. Once again, I had been proven wrong, and it was ultimately my arrogance and my own narrow worldview that had brought me down. So I went to Mr. I-Failed-Geometry and apologized to him, telling him that his street signs could have as many sides as he wanted, that I was very sorry, and that I would never, ever, question him again. I had foolishly assumed that I could decide things based on facts, when I should have realized that the truth is subjective. It’s based on perception, and anyone’s opinion is just as legitimate as someone else’s. How could I have been so blind? How silly of me. |
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