I should know !

One of the things I always remember people saying to defend their point of view was "I should know ..." followed by some tenuous claim to have infinite wisdom in the particular area of knowledge under debate.

For instance - talking about football you could say "You can't score from and indirect free kick - I should know ... I've played for the school team all season !" (not that I ever did).

My most hated memory of this was of one lad in my class at primary school. Timothy.

We were doing experiments with light bulbs and motors and batteries etc., and we had a box full of stuff to clip together to make simple circuits. I was about to join up a number of strips of wire to make a light circuit with a switch. A doddle for me even at the tender age of about 9 and a half.

Timothy decided he knew better - single stranded wire could not be used - he'd obviously spotted that some of the wires were multi stranded, and had managed to pick all of them up, as there weren't many. He insisted that the single core wires could not be used - they simply would not work, and single wires didn't conduct electricity.

Now it was pretty damned obvious to me that he was wrong. One - the metal conducted the electricity - it was the same for both wires, and two - most of the wires in the box were single strand and hardly any were multi strand - why the hell would anybody put non-condicting wires in the circuit experiment box, and three - I'd done it before and it worked then.

But Timothy was not to be deterred - he'd got his mad up now and put on his best angry look and voice, and gave me his killer debating point :

"Look single wire's useless for electricity - I should know ... My Dad's an Electrician ! "

I let him use his wires - like I cared anyway, and little Timothy went off thinking he'd won a great victory.

I knew differently. I knew that he was wrong about the wires, I knew that if his Dad had told him that he was wrong about the wires as well, I knew that the occupation of one's father does little to enhance subject specific knowledge in 9 and 10 years olds, and that it certainly hadn't enhanced Timothy's.

And here's the killer - I also knew that Timothy's Dad was a chef - a rather good one actually - and not an electrician.

What I did not know before that day, but quickly learned - was that Timothy was a popular , but ill informed and unintelligent little shit, and he remained so for many years. This put me in good stead for quite some time, although he was too stupid to realise it.