Take a deep breath, then respond.

One of my closest friends recently got married. When I received her wedding invite, I noticed that it had the wrong date on it. It had Saturday with Sunday's date. Seriously, as a former bride I fell into the instant sweat for my friend. Oh crap, all her people received the wrong date! What to do? I thought about how I could tell her without sending her into Bridemania mode.

In the end I called her and left her a very nice message. She called me back the next day laughing because she said out of the all the invites that went out she received two calls. My really nice message and a really sarcastic "I love to be the bearer of bad news" message from another friend. Which in this case, she laughed about because our messages were clearly our personalities.

Same message, two ways of delivering it. WHY AM I TELLING YOU THIS STORY? I do have a point.

I am a Girl Scout leader. This is a totally volunteer job that I love but sometimes when it comes to the administration side of it...I could use a break. I recently sent out an email listing the remaining meeting dates and times to all parents. I forgot that one of the dates was a 1/2 days of school so my email had the wrong meeting time. I very quickly received back many emails. In some I could literally hear the HA HA, YOU MADE A BOO BOO while others were just very polite 'clarifications requests'.

So hear is the life long question:
WHY DO SOME PEOPLE FEEL THAT TWINGE OF POWER WHEN OTHERS MAKE MISTAKES? Do they get a thrill of pointing out when others are wrong? (You are wrong, na,na,na,na,na,na! Member that from 1st 2nd grade?)

Lesson to my kids:
It is ALL IN THE PACKAGING PEOPLE. I always say this to my friends and try to teach it to my kids. There are always two ways of saying something. Say it how you would like someone to say it to you. ;o)

As a mom and teacher, I have learned to form a thicker skin. There are inevitably conflicts that arise and sticky situations in life. However, this was not one of them. This is not a conflict. It is barely a blip...that is why I needed to vent. This was just a dumb email where I made a small mistake. NOT heart surgery my friends. The earth will NOT fall off it's axis. So...

I would love it if people would TAKE A DEEP BREATH, then respond.