Someone pressed my button today – a fact checker on a pay-per-click site.  She told me that the site was “upgrading” its standards, and that she was going to delete my article, if I didn’t change the sections that were inaccurate.  But they were accurate.  She just didn’t understand or read my sources.

She had a Ph.D. after her name.  Probably a Ph.D. in Intestinal Studies.  She was far younger than me.  She was unattractive and proud of it.  She really, really bugged me.

So I went back and forth with her, defending the disputed sections of my article.  She hurled back her sources.  The problem was that I was writing about one thing (simulated diamonds), and she was referencing facts for another (the simulated diamond material that polishes drill bits). 

I don’t like being told what to do by a woman half my age with a Ph.D. after her name.  I have initials after my name, too, but I don’t feel the need to flaunt them on a pay-per-click site.  She’s probably insecure – or just plain mean.

I sent a memo to the person in charge.  When I went back to my site, Miss Meanie had posted: “If you don’t correct your article, I am deleting it in two days!”

“No problem,” I said.  “I have already appealed the matter to someone higher on the food chain.”  (So there, Meanie.)

I did everything that I counsel other people not to do — (I am a mental health professional.)  I personalized a relatively trivial issue.  I exchanged insult for insult.  I took the matter to the highest official on the website, instead of working my way through the chain of command.  So much for walking what I talk.

People with initials after their names bring out the worst in me.  I feel like they have something to prove, if they advertise to the universe that they — are — “Somebody.”  I feel the need to knock them off their self-made pedestals.  I know that I am insecure.

I never should have allowed that woman to rent space in my head.  We all have a masochistic gene in our DNA, and every once in awhile it activates.  Today was the day for mine.