Recovering from a Catastrophic Grammatical Blunder (That time I thought it was called, 'AFRONTation')

Once I was chatting to my friend in the foyer of our church in London when she brought up her summer plans and her desire to attend the Afro Nation festival (I know, I know). I had never been to Afro Nation but I was familiar enough with the concept of it to hold a conversation. That was until she stopped me saying, 

Um, babe, it's actually 'Afro Nation'

For you see, I had been referring to it as AFRONTATION. Like I said, I had never been interested in the festival and had only heard people speak of it in passing. So I thought it was called "Afrontation" and that the auditory effect was just Britons speaking the way Brits speak. Boy, was I wrong!

I am a brown-skinned person but on that spot, I blushed deep shades of scarlet, crimson and beet. My embarrassment was to the maximum! Which is weird considering that it was an honest mistake and my friend was utterly unfazed as she smoothly corrected me and moved on. But I kept on getting flashbacks to that moment of confident embarrassment.

Now that I've shared my shame with you, I hope to hear yours in the comments (it's only fair, guys).

Now to the point of this blog, how do we recover from grammatical blunders? But first, why do we feel consternation at all? 

I believe the answer to that is deeply rooted in the essentials of the human psyche. In its simplest explanation, we want to be represented at our best at all times, which is a noble -if slightly unreasonable- aspiration for beings who need to reach into a ceramic bowl to clean themselves. I reckon the humiliation is compounded by the 'other person' factor which is powered by our desire to manage other peoples' perception of us.

So what do you do to recover from a grammatical blunder whose recollection threatens to unfasten the seams of your self-respect and sanity? I suggest the following, in any order of your choosing:

Accept. Learn. Teach

1. You can't un-spill spilt milk; that is to say, move on.

2. Never again. What can you do to ensure that you don't make this particular mistake again? (for you will make others).

3. Teach. Reinforce your learning, and help protect someone from stepping on the same grammatical landmine by sharing knowledge.

Don't be self-important.

Other than these, I don't see you can do about a blunder you have already made. Don't be silly and go beating yourself up for prolonged periods.

To help you feel better, I'll tell you one more of my own silly blunders.

FACADE (I pronounced it: fah-kayd). Just imagine a protracted monologue with repeated (ab)use of the word, only to get punctured with just three words: "It's pronounced 'fah-SAHD"

Dear Lord!!! In my defence, I was 18 years old when I made that mistake; that's the story I'm sticking with.

As a final piece of advice, think about the fact that words don't even mean anything inherently. They only mean what we ascribe to them. How are we supposed to excel faultlessly in the use of something that means nothing but also means a lot of things?