Two sides? To every story? Nah...

Back in 1978, I was a teenager living in Groves, Texas.  I had an after school job at a small local hospital doing yard-work and minor repairs.  That year, our town got hit by a minor hurricane.  Not real bad damage but there was significant flooding.  In parts of town, the water was 2 – 3 feet high.  As a result, a lot of the hospital staff was unable to get to work because their cars couldn’t make it through the water.

To everyone's surprise, the hospital's no-frills Chevy pickup was able to get through the deep water pretty well.  So my boss and I traded shifts driving staff members to and from work.  You can imagine that I thought this was pretty cool.  I got to drive around town when everybody else was stuck at home and take the nurses to and from work.  Pretty exciting stuff for a teenage boy…

At one point, I was driving down a major street trying to navigate some pretty deep water.  Because of the deep water I had to maintain a good forward speed.  If I slowed down too much, the water would get too far in the tailpipe and the engine would die.  Then all of a sudden I heard someone yell out “You better slow down or I’ll put you in the [blanking] hospital!”  I looked around and realized he was yelling at me! 

The businesses lining the street were battling the encroaching water and many of them had sandbags piled up to keep the floodwater out of their stores.  It was the owner of a local appliance store that was so angry at me.  It turns out that I was kicking up a pretty good wake and that the water was coming in over the sandbags.  He was doing his best to save his store and here I was making things worse for him!

Later on, I realized this was an example of how there are two sides to every story and, in some cases, both sides are right.  I was out there doing a good deed - the hospital employees needed to get to work in order to take care of patients.  But he was right – I was causing him even more damage than he had already suffered.

Just because you are right doesn't mean the other guy is wrong.