Tuesday, the roundabout, and the moment you knew

It's Tuesday evening and you're in the car on the way to your in-laws, and you've said the second exit is quicker. Your partner says the third. You explain why the second is quicker, and it's a good explanation, and about halfway through it you remember the roadworks that have been on the second exit since March. You know, at that moment, that the third is quicker. You've known it for about a second.

What you say next is that the roadworks are nearly finished. You have no idea whether the roadworks are nearly finished. Then you say that even with the roadworks it's about the same, and then that it depends on the time of day, and by now you're at the roundabout and you take the second exit, and you sit in the roadworks, and neither of you says anything for a mile. You arrive four minutes later than you would have and about forty minutes further apart.

Or it's the meeting version. You said last week that the new supplier would be cheaper, and someone has brought the figures, and the figures say otherwise, and you can see they say otherwise, and you hear yourself saying the figures don't include the onboarding cost. You don't know whether they include the onboarding cost. Or it's the group chat, where you said the film came out in 2009 and somebody has posted a screenshot saying 2011, and you type "pretty sure it was released earlier in some countries". It wasn't. You're going to spend the next hour waiting to see whether anyone replies.

These are invented, but I'd guess yours is close. Some words. The line is the position you took, whatever it was, and are now holding. The turn is the moment, mid-sentence or in the car afterwards or at two in the morning, when you privately stop believing the line. Holding is what you do after the turn, which is carry on defending the line anyway. The climb-down is the alternative, which is saying out loud that you were wrong. The five words are the climb-down in its shortest form, "I was wrong about that," and chapter 21 is about them. The slide is the third option, which is quietly coming round to the other view without ever saying the line was wrong, and chapter 12 is about that. The salvage is the bit you were right about, held up to cover the bit you weren't. Standing is the thing you think you're protecting by holding. The audience is whoever you think is watching. And the tab is what holding costs, which chapter 18 adds up.

Before you go on, do one thing. For a week, notice the turn. Don't change anything yet. When you feel yourself privately stop believing something you're saying, make a mark somewhere, on your phone or on the back of your hand, and note what you did in the next thirty seconds. Held, climbed down, or slid. You'll want the marks in chapter 20.