For those of you who are unaware, I maintain an “I told you so” calendar among my many Google calendars. I can’t recommend it more highly.
Let me explain.
It has long frustrated me that people can make ridiculous claims about the future with little or no fear that they will ever come back to bite them. Make some nonsense assertion about the stock market over the next two years or predict the next President with absolute certainty, and typically, by the time these predicted moments actually arrive, the comment has been forgotten, and the inaccuracy remains unacknowledged forever.
It grants unfair, unearned power in the moment while failing to account for long-term results.
Politicians do this all the time. It’s why so many of them suck. They make ridiculous prognostications and impossible promises, knowing full well that they will rarely be held accountable.
Not anymore.
With the use of the “I told you so” calendar, ridiculous, baseless, mindless claims can be fact- checked when the moment arrives, and the perpetrators of this nonsense can finally feel the sting of being held accountable for their deception and stupidity. No longer will people spout off about the future with impunity. I am now armed and ready to call them to the carpet when the time is right.
This may seem petty to you, but as a person who takes argumentation and debate seriously, there is nothing more frustrating than someone predicting an improbable and wholly unsupported future as an integral part of their argument without some form of future recourse.
I also think that the four best words in the English language are “I told you so.” People scoff at the assertion, but I have yet to hear four words that are better.
My “I told you so” calendar is littered with items:
- Unlikely sports predictions made by irrational fans of opposing teams
- Assertions related to parenting that I can’t wait to prove wrong
- Political forecasts that will undoubtedly never happen
- Job-related predictions that are made with little foresight or perspective
And when these things don’t happen, I will be there, anxiously waiting to say, “I told you so.”
My favorite item to come to fruition thus far was the assertion of three friends that one or more of my children would end up sleeping in my bed, not just for the occasional middle-of-the-night nightmare. These are friends who had children in their beds for years — a practice I have always found inexplicable and inadvisable — but these friends assured me that, regardless of my belief, it was also unavoidable.
On my daughter’s third birthday, I called these three friends and informed them that my daughter had never spent the night sleeping in our bed.
When my son turned three, I called them again, informing them that my son had spent a total of two nights in our bed, both times as a result of illness.
“I told you so,” I said. And it felt so good.
Last week, I added an item to the “I told you so” calendar for 2035, surpassing the entry about my father-in-law’s prediction that the NFL would cease to exist by 2030.
While one of my students was stating her hypothesis about what type of person dreams more for her upcoming science fair project, she said that “little kids” probably dream more since “your life is practically over when you’re 30.”
I pushed back on the idea that life was essentially over at 30, but she held fast to this belief.
I’ll be contacting this young lady in March of 2035 — on her 30th birthday — to inquire about the state of her life and to utter those four perfect words:
I told you so.
I can’t wait.
