Many people don’t accept help. They think that asking for help is a sign of weakness. Actually as we learned in Health, asking for help and being resourceful is genius. I was always annoyed when my dad corrected my speech. Now I correct others. Whenever I wanted a friend to come over, I would always ask,
“Can me and Matt get together?”
“Matt and I .”
“Right.”

Eventually I began to correct myself, but it took a while. I think that my dad would always correct me because of two things: 1 he’s my dad, parents teach their children. 2 my dad’s an actor; it’s his job to pronounce things correctly. He will always correct me. One day, I came home from school with a backpack full of homework and jackets. I said, “Hi” to my dad and washed my hands in the bathroom. I came back out and my Dad and I plunged into conversation.
“How are you?”
“Good”
“How was school today?”
“Good”
“Did anything interesting happen?”
“… We started learning about Nu-cler energy in Science.”
“Not Nu-cler, Nu-cle-er .”
“Oops, sorry.”

Discussions like this annoyed me. I had things I needed to do, and I felt my dad was just drawing out the conversation. I already knew how to pronounce Nu-cle-er; I had just made a mistake. So I was annoyed. Meanwhile, my dad was just trying to help me. He reminds me over, and over, and over, until the correct way is stuck in my head for all eternity.



Although didn’t just talk about words, we talked about the social world, previous wars, religion, technology, the “old days”, and philosophy. While these discussions were interesting, I still would rather do other things. I misunderstood my dad’s motives. It’s human nature to look more at the negatives than the positives. People often misinterpret what others say.

Once I saw a spoof of criminal rights on the internet. “You have the right to remain silent; anything you say will be misquoted and used against you.” I did this with my dad. He was just trying to help me. He always says, “No good deed goes unpunished.” Our talks continued for a few months until I learned to accept his help. In-between were many annoying moments. Now whenever I hear someone say, “Anyways,” instead of, “Anyway,” I usually correct them.