aaaack!

Calliope folds her arms over her chest. Crimson creeps across her cheeks. “Again?”

Urania growls like Roy Kent.

“Whaaaaat?” Thalia shrugs. “Auto-correct foils us once more?”

Urania growls — twice.

“Only wooooooonnnnn thing for it —” Thalia claps three times. “Find and fire the computer gremlins!”

“Or…?” Cal scratches her neck, “… maybe… We can just slow down?”

Urania growls — thrice.

Mistakes are at the very base of human thought, embedded there, feeding the structure like root nodules. If we were not provided with the knack of being wrong, we could never get anything useful done. We think our way along by choosing between right and wrong alternatives, and the wrong choices have to be made as frequently as the right ones. We get along in life this way. We are built to make mistakes, coded for error.

We learn, as we say, by “trial and error.” Why do we always say that? Why not “trial and rightness” or “trial and triumph”? The old phrase puts it that way because that is, in real life, the way it is done.
~ Lewis Thomas
Harvested from today’s Marginalian