Anyway, though I HAD been told not to preen at all, they went further and told me at least one way of how not to preen. Matter of abundant caution, I suppose, just in case I decided to go ahead and preen anyway. (Perhaps, too, they realized that, like all such advice, it was too idealistic and would only be observed in the breach.)
So they told me, "Never show off what you know, especially by way of correcting other people's mistakes." I nodded solemnly, took the advice to heart and applied it in life.
Of course, you know how it goes. Where there is an advice, there is always a counter-advice. So, they also told me, at a different point in time, that a good friend is not one who always agrees with you but will criticize what you are doing wrong so that you become better. (Yeah, THAT happened when I went raging to them about the friend who made fun of the fact that I could add 2 and 2 and bring about a different result every time I tried!)
I did not want to preen the wrong way and, at the same time, I wanted to be known as a good friend. THAT was a muddle which I never really resolved. When Facebook happened, I thought I had found out the way at last. So, when someone made an error in his Facebook post, I diffidently knocked on his door, metaphorically, on messenger, and said, "I say, I think you made a typo. Instead of typing East you have North in your post, where you talk of where the Sun rises. Could you correct it?"
I hardly got anyone clasping me to his bosom, calling me his dear friend, for all that. The more I interacted on Facebook, the angrier I got about all the wrong advice I had been given in my youth, marring my social prospects. I found that it was quite OK to point out mistakes in public to rank strangers, even ones who you would never want for a friend if the two of you were the lone occupants of a deserted island. In fact, if you were the first to criticize a 'mistake' on someone else's post, even if YOU are the one who is totally mistaken, you got a reputation of being knowledgeable.
Essentially, because I took that advice about how not to preen and stayed silent in public, I ended up being a nonentity with everyone totally confident that I knew nothing worth mention. To think that I could have been feted and respected if only I had gone around correcting people left, right and center!
It is never too late, is it? So, the next time someone put up a post saying, "Off course one of my friend found it difficult to reign in his tears when we lost the match", I pounced on it. "That sentence should read 'Of course one of my friends found it difficult to rein in his tears...'" I commented, sure now that I had made a good start to making my reputation as a knowledgeable person.
And, then, to my entire consternation, I found one of the acknowledged wise men of Social media replying to my comment saying, "There is nothing worse than know-it-alls correcting English on Social media". Ye Gods!
Apparently, you can correct people in the names of birds, in their interpretations of books, in their knowledge of Cricket...well, almost everything under the Sun. You can do it politely or rudely, even call the person a nitwit, and it is all perfectly in order. The one thing that you CANNOT do is correct people's English, however politely.
How was I to know? Alas, there goes my chance of impressing people! About the only knowledge I have nodding acquaintance with IS English!
