Today I Was Right and Still an Asshole.

I was an asshole today because I was right, and turned it into a dumb righteousness-of-knowledge crusade. Here’s the breakdown.

The venerable NAD 3020i that pumped out sweet sounds for more than 30 years went the way of many vintage electronics: it died without warning. I found a worthy, if not brilliant, successor in the NAD C316BEE V2. Quite a name.

I made my way down to my local all-purpose electronics dealer, and soon we were embroiled in a lingo-brawl. “There is no such thing as an AUX plug,” I said. “AUX means auxiliary: it’s a glorious name for ‘add yet another input.’” I was met with blank stares.

I’d forgotten that the fine gent behind the counter didn’t wield English as his primary language. We were in the same space, but our versions of English were so loosely tethered together that a form of sign language might have been more successful.

I won the banal little battle, also convincing the poor guy that some of the cables marked “OFC” referred to oxygen-free copper, not a connection type. But here’s the thing: I got what I wanted, and the chaos that came with seizing the higher ground led me to take the wrong cable anyway. I didn’t focus on what mattered. My mission failed, because I made it personal. The poor guy didn’t sign up for a seminar on audio terminology. Not everyone cares about the purity of nomenclature, and that’s also OK.

I returned later to apologize and swap the wrong cable, I took, for the one I actually needed. It was still right there on the counter. I left feeling like an asshole. Sometimes being right just ain’t right. But it’s a lesson in humility, a reminder of how words can lose a lot in translation when they cross generations and continents, and that there’s a time and place for teaching. Sometimes the mature teacher knows you can be OK with getting what you came for, leaving with dignity, and leaving it at that.