You know what a contradiction is, don’t you? It is whatever comes out of your wife’s mouth whenever you make a statement asserting that whatever you said is factually true. She will promptly and always explain to you how wrong you are… loudly… and in great detail. No matter if you happen to be provably right or not.
What’s that, you say? I’m wrong about that too? Of course, I am, dear. I only deserve the catfood cookies.
The fact is, if you raise your hand and give the teacher the correct answer often enough, you get a certain reputation amongst your classmates. Instead of continuing to call you, “dumbhead,” or “stupidhead,” or the simplified form of “caca-poo-poo-head” like they endearingly call everybody else, they begin calling you pejoratives like “Einstein,” or “Brainiac,” or “Supernerd, taah tah taaah!” And they begin pointing out in detail everything that is wrong about you. How you dress… how you talk… especially how you laugh. You have become the enemy. You must be contradicted.
“You are wrong, Mickey!”
“So, I get to be Dumbhead again?”
“No. you are still “Supernerd, taah tah taaah!” But you are wrong. We all think so, so that must be right.”
The truth is, Life itself is a contradiction. Considering the violence and hostility of the physical universe towards life, it is a miracle that anything at all is alive in the universe. The chaos of everything guarantees that if you are born into the miracle of life, then at some point, caused by a nearly infinite variety of possible aids to chaos, you will die. Order is whittled away into chaos. Civilizations fall eventually. Things die all the time.
But if all order must, by physical laws of the universe, be broken down into chaos, then, how is it that we have any order at all in the first place? Where does order come from? I’d give you a possible answer. But I would just be contradicted by the majority
Except for fundamentalist Christians who would say, “Let me think for a moment about why you are still wrong… and then I’ll tell you what I think the Bible says about why you are actually still wrong.”
One thing about being “only book-smart, but without common sense” that makes being contradicted all the time worth it, is that the more challenged the answers you come up with are, the more deeply you dig into them, and the more of a real-world understanding of why I am wrong about everything begins to make a bit more sense. Or not. Because I’m probably wrong in your estimation anyway.
Catch a Falling Star 
Mickey, very clever. It pays to have a good sense of humor and ability to laugh at yourself. As for being called a brainiac, even before the revenge of the nerds, to me being called a brainiac beat the heck out of other options. Kids are going to gossip, just like adults, but they have fewer filters. So, the best thing is to be yourself, then what you are called is closer to the answer you might want.
I remember at my 5th HS reunion, one of the biggest bullies was painfully nice to everyone. I think he realized being a jerk was not the best way to be. Yet, it was funny watching how people he maltreated reacted to this change of mindset.
As for wives, I think I would rather be corrected than not heard. I speak softly and my wife has husband deafness. I think in our 70s, we will be shouting at each other to be heard. Keith
I like your analysis. But, considering the topic of this essay, I am supposed to contradict you and argue. Still, “husband deafness” is such a stunningly good diagnosis of the basic problem, I am forced to capitulate and totally agree.