When starting with a presumption instead of a fact things could go wrong. This is my lesson learnt.
“Come here. I know you did this,” I called my son from the other room. I asserted my surety as I saw something incorrectly done when I entered the kitchen. This is a situation that I have repeatedly asked him to correct and I was not pleased to see that it was not done yet again.
His confused reaction was something I chose to ignore right then – I made another presumption. Morgan approached me meekly as I stood by the scene of his supposed crime. To be fair to him, although he didn’t seem to have any clue what I was talking about he still came when I summoned her.
As I started to lay out the fine details of this repeated offence we both heard another voice pipe up from the stairs, “It was me, Auntie Marjorie, I did it. Sorry.”
Immediate shame hit me.
In that second I learnt a lesson. The first thing I did was to apologise to Morgan for the false accusation, then I thanked and praised H for owning up without hesitation even though she was aware that I was not pleased with the situation I had found.
My other lesson learnt?
Unless I see the ‘crime’ being committed with my own eyes, then I need to ask first and don’t presume to know it all.
Starting anything with a wrong presumption will invariably lead to erroneous ‘facts’ that seem cast iron truth. With good fortune, in this situation, the truth came to light quickly and I was not hesitant in acknowledging my errors: lesson learnt.
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