"That's not what I meant!"

“That’s not what I meant!”

            Everyone has very different perceptions on things. I can think of countless times when things were said either to me, or that I have said that have been perceived incorrectly. A specific time that comes to mind is this one time with my best friend. Her and I always stick together no matter what the circumstance and it even occurs when it comes to backing one another up, which would make some people defensive or feel intimidated. So during our junior year of high school there was this girl who started to hang around us, and we did not mind. She was nice and we were both friends with her. One day she told us that she feels like we don’t want her to hang around us because we always talk about things and do things that do not include her. We both immediately felt really bad about this because we never wanted her to feel like we did not want her to hang around us. We were just always so used to talking to each other, and planning things to do with each other,  that we never thought that us being so close could make someone else feel inferior. The way we did things were just out of habit and since we were always together it made it difficult to break that habit. Thankfully we both explained to her that we never wanted her to feel like we didn’t want her to hang out with us and that we would try to fix it and make things better. She understood and to this day we are all three still friends and I feel that as our friend, when she pointed that out to us it made us all three closer, and made us feel more open with each other.

            I think the concept of “That’s not what I meant” probably happens at least once a day for people especially for those with jobs or lifestyles that include interacting with a lot of different people.  I mean if you think about it, you could be at the grocery store, and lets say you make a comment about the store being out of a product that you regularly buy, they may take this in a manner in which they think you are being rude or “smart” with them, when really you are just pointing out that an item that you regularly buy at that grocery store has been out of stock for quite some time.