Always Right
No matter how often my younger sister and I would argue over a point or a fact or an opinion, she was always right. And it was imperative to her that she let me know she was right and that I admit that I was wrong or if she was generous, that I hadn’t been quite correct. Why did I ever believe I would beat her at a game or a fact or superior knowledge I have no idea, but I stayed committed to the effort. I believed that sooner or later she would slip up, and I would appear victorious. Never happened.
From her youngest years, from before she could read to herself, she wanted to hear the same stories. “Blueberries for Sal” and “Harry the Dirty Dog” were the favourites. Trips to the library meant returning the books, going to the children’s section, having a look at the shelves and her turning to me to say, “I would like “Blueberries and Harry please.” The library had multiple copies but if one of those copies was missing from the shelf, she would ask me to go back to the desk and ask if we could have the book back, please.
When she was older books held little interest. I would have stacks of reading material and offer one to her and she would shake her head and say it took too much time to get involved in a story. She preferred poetry and magazines. It’s not that she had a short attention span, she just needed the space to cram in as much information as she could in as short a time as possible.
One afternoon I found her curled up in the big chair, engrossed in a very large book. Flipping the pages at speed, she nodded, smiled and flipped another page. I wandered over to have a look at what could be so fascinating to the girl who wouldn’t even read a Nancy Drew mystery. I did a double take, looked again and said “Are you reading the Guiness Book of World Records?” to a vigorous nod of the head and an exclamation that it was “fascinating.” That child absorbed information and filed it in a vault for future use.
Roll forward to the two of us adults, enjoying an evening with a group made up of family and friends. Someone suggested “Trivial Pursuit” (you can guess who that would be) and off we went to tangle with things we knew, things we thought we knew and things we didn’t know at all. One of the answers in the entertainment section was Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” which seems innocent enough. But this led to a discussion by the group about the lyrics of the song and an argument ensued that we all took part in, but my sister and I fought to the death. The others didn’t share our “I’m right and you’re wrong” history. The group – minus my sister – thought the lyric was “you had one eye in the mirror, as you watched yourself go by; And all the girls dreamed that they’d be your partner.” Why did we think that? A vain man would watch himself “go by”. It’s what we heard with our ears. To which my sister informed us all that the line was actually “you had one eye in the mirror, as your watched yourself gavotte.” Cue argument over the word gavotte and why it would be in a song about a vain man. The evening ended late and in a standoff.
Days after that evening I received a visit from my sister, dictionary in hand and a printout of the lyrics to the song. She simply handed both to me, page open to “gavotte” and waited the way that she had of a straight face and eyes that said “I’m waiting.” When I finished reading, she smiled and nodded as I choked out “I was wrong” but that wasn’t what she wanted – she wanted “you were right. I was wrong.” Massive throat clearing to get that out.
She was Taurus through and through and I’m a Sagittarius to the core. Earth and fire. We know what happens to fire when it is overpowered by earth. Fire doesn’t stand a chance. I’d give anything for the two of us to have another argument so I could quite happily say freely and breezily, “You were right. You were always right.”