Part of my problem

[fbhjr]

Part of the issue I have in dealing with people in understanding what they
want. There are times I just don’t understand what is being asked, but
think I do.
Because where I’ve gone with it can be in a totally different direction,
even communicating the difference can be difficult.

When I was young, I spent a lot of time in special needs classes because of
problems like this. I would be nice to think that those classes were there
to help people like me who had problems understanding things to relate
better and understand more. But, that was not my experience.

I remember being in one special needs session when I was six or seven years
old where there were a bunch of us seated in the gym. We were told that if
we did the exercise they wanted us to do, we’d get a piece of candy and get
to go home.
We were handed two popsicle sticks and told to hold one in each hand out in
front of us.
“Now, look from one to the other without moving your head,” we were told.

I had thought this was an instruction as to what muscles you were allowed
to use in this motion. No muscle on your head was allowed.
Doing my best to follow the directions, I held out the sticks, locked my
eyes forward and moving only my neck muscles rotated my head to move my
eyes from one to the other.

“Frank, you’re doing it wrong,” I was told. “Everyone else got it right.
Everyone but Frank, come get your candy and go home.”
I had not seen what the others did that was right. I assumed that they had
just been better at controlling the movement of their heads. I assumed I
had blinked or something like that, so it counted as my head moving.
I did it again, this time to be sure not to even blink.
“You’re doing it wrong,” the teacher said. “You’re moving your head.”
“No, I’m moving my neck,” I said. “I didn’t move any of the muscles on my
head that time I was very careful.”
“You moved your head,” the teacher repeated. “Don’t do that.”
I held the sticks back out and was very, very careful to keep all the
muscles on my head still as I rotated between the two.
“You moved your head!” the teacher yelled.
“No!” I shouted back. “I’m moving my neck!”
“Frank, can you do it just by moving your eyes?” the second teacher asked.
“Of course,” I said. I held out the sticks and moved my eyes from one to
the other.
“Here’s your candy, you can go,” the second teacher said.

I really thought, sitting there at 6 years old in the gym that the purpose
of the exercise was to control all the muscles on your head so they
wouldn’t move while you were controlling your neck muscles to do something
else.
I had been given no example of how to do it, and had missed everyone else
doing it right as I had been trying myself at the time.
And, the teacher would only tell me I was wrong without giving me any
explanation of why my interpretation wasn’t the right one.
I’m not saying “I was right” or anything like that. What was wanted was my
only moving my eyes. What I had interpreted, not to move any muscles on
your head, specifically precluded doing that.
It is just an example of how my fundamental understanding of what is being
communicated is sometimes drastically different from the person telling me.
And, simply telling me I’m wrong doesn’t help because I don’t even
understand what is being requested.

This ties in to what my boss said to me this week about being less
defensive when I’m wrong. It is something other people have told me many
times over the last 5 decades.
If I don’t understand that I have something wrong, I have a huge problem
“accepting I’m wrong and moving on”

I do not, in any way, feel that I don’t make mistakes or am always right.
But if I think I’ve done something right and am told it is wrong I need to
understand why.
There have been a fair number of times this has come down to people
shouting at me that I’m wrong.
I guess they see it as me being stubborn or defensive or whatever and just
not willing to accept that I’m wrong.
I’ve never been a fan of the “because I say so” reason for people to be
right.
If I don’t understand, I am not good at accepting.
And, that’s part of the problem.