I don’t expect everybody in my small town to agree with me, and I’d probably be a little suspicious if they did. I’m more interested in what happens after we disagree.

In a place this size, the person who thinks I made a terrible decision today may be standing beside me at the store tomorrow. I may need their help later. They may need mine. Neither one of us gets to conveniently disappear because we got mad at each other.

That’s probably not a bad thing.

A disagreement gets harder to come back from when we stop arguing about what happened and start deciding what kind of person the other one must be. Somebody questions a city decision, so they’re against the town. Somebody criticizes the police, so they hate law enforcement. Before long, the original disagreement isn’t even what we’re talking about anymore.

If somebody thinks I made a bad decision, I’d rather deal with the decision. Maybe they’re right. Maybe they’re missing part of the story. Maybe they’re just pissed off and I’m still not changing anything. None of that requires me to make them an enemy.

Public service gets tested when the person asking for help is somebody who criticized you yesterday, but my responsibility to them doesn’t change. Somebody can criticize me or the police today and call us for help tomorrow. They don’t have to take back what they said first. They don’t have to like me. We still have a job to do.

I can explain why I made a decision, but explaining it isn’t the same as asking them to approve it. Sometimes somebody can understand exactly why I did something and still think I was wrong. I can live with that.

I can trust somebody who disagrees with me, too. If I know they’ll tell me what they actually think, keep the disagreement about the issue, and still work with me when the next problem comes along, that’s a useful relationship.

Sometimes somebody is still going home mad. There isn’t always a compromise sitting in the middle that makes everybody happy, and I don’t think there needs to be.

If we can disagree today and still be neighbors tomorrow, that’s enough.

Some people make that very difficult.

How ignorant, entitled, self-centered or just strung out would a Eufaula businessman need to be to feel comfortable enough to body-shame anyone, for any reason, in any context?

I wonder how many customers, or their spouses, are quietly judged as they write a check to Scott Redmon or Lake Eufaula Alabama Crappie Fishing Guide Services? This type of person would never say what he really thinks to your face, so you should probably cut them two checks… one for each face. My nonexistent wife is OK, too, Scotty.