When I was a freshman in high school, I sat next to a senior in my professional communications class. The teacher in that class was particularly insufferable: she was particular about everything and had a tendency to grade dependent on her mood. Immediately I disliked her, and expressed such to my new friend the senior. He told me that I had it all wrong. There was no point in disliking her.

He told me something his dad had taught him: he pointed at a red flag hanging in the back of the classroom and said, “See that flag? If the teacher says it’s red, then it’s red. But if teacher says it’s blue? Then that flag is blue.”

This story is about something like that.