Thursday, July 10, 2008

When Did I Turn Into A School Marm?


I was walking down the street yesterday behind this guy and either his girlfriend or a work colleague and I heard him talking about actor Christopher Guest. He was saying that Christopher Guest used to be in the House of Commons because he had family rights until they kicked him out.

What? Immediately I went into school marm mode, and it was on the tip of my tongue to correct him (it was the House of Lords and it was the House of Lords Act of 1999 that 'kicked him out'). However I didn't because a) it was none of my business and b) who wants some strange person correcting your assumptions on the street. Not that it hasn't stopped me before from interjecting into other people's conversations when I hear them searching for the correct name or the history of something.

Why do I do this? Is it too show off how much I know? Too be helpful? I don't know. I found myself doing it later at The Philoctetes Center when I overheard cutie-pie author discussing the Rosenbergs. I had just had to interject to explain who exactly Ruth Greenglass was. Great! It's bad enough that I chatter like a magpie whenever I'm with him, now I've added school marm to the mix.

This is why I'm still single.

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