Top Dog, Underdog

by Martha Beck

The "God Is in the Details" Display

Detail-oriented know-it-alls don't sit around memorizing textbooks. Instead they correct others' versions of events, often missing the whole point of a conversation in their obsessive focus on minutia. Their conversations frequently go something like this:

Ordinary person: So there we are at Breakfast Buffet, having waffles, and this guy comes in with a gun! A semiautomatic! And he's waving it around—

Know-it-all: No, that's wrong. You weren't having waffles. I had waffles. You had the French toast.

Ordinary person: All right, whatever. Anyway, this gunman is yelling, "Where's my wife? Where is that two-timing slut?" And then—

Know-it-all: I'm sure you didn't have waffles, because when we got our order, you said to me, "Darlene, now I wish I'd ordered the waffles, because those are some good-looking waffles you got there." Remember?

Ordinary person: Okay, okay. So anyway, then he starts shooting at the pie counter, and there's pie flying everywhere, and—

Know-it-all: You've never had waffles since that time in Hoboken when you had the hiccup problem.

Detail-oriented know-it-alls have been known to sustain a conversation like this, with periodic interruptions, for up to 50 years. Most of their friends simply talk over them, though if you have a detail-oriented know-it-all in your immediate circle, it helps to have a choke chain available for emergencies.