Mistakes happen. Get over it.

Working in the shop a few weeks back, I was listening to a Detroit sports-talk radio show hosted by Doug Karsch and Scott Anderson. Doug made what was clearly an innocent mistake. Talking through his final thought before a commercial break, he referred to the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams as the St. Louis Rams. The Rams franchise had literally just moved; the professional football team is not playing in St. Louis for the first time in 20 years this coming season. Doug wasn’t the first and won’t be last to make that error over the next year.

As soon as the show returned from break, Doug corrected himself, but not before the station’s text message inbox was filled with comments from people setting him straight. The tones of the notes varied, but most had a “know-it-all” vibe, and many were flat out mean-spirited.

According to the hosts, this is the same response they get every time one of them makes even the most innocuous mistake. The worst possible time to make a mistake, they said, is right before a commercial break. The radio station’s advertisements start playing, and even though 99.9 percent of the time the talk show hosts realize right off the bat that they screwed up, they can’t fix the faux pas until they’re back on the air in five minutes or so.

In the meantime, hundreds of calls and text messages flood the radio station to make sure they know they’re wrong, in this case about something as trivial and obvious as what city the Rams reside in for 2016. Doug said it was tempting to get on the mic, cut in from the commercials, and say “Yeah, yeah! I know! I said the wrong city! I misspoke! Stop texting me your corrections!”

Scott imagined the poor saps who were listening in, chomping at the bit for the hosts to make a mistake, their phone at the ready, hoping to be the first to correct them … then crestfallen if the host corrects himself before they had the chance to call or text with their vastly superior knowledge.

I was part of a similar mistake late last year, although one not as easily “fixed.” Road & Track magazine visited my shop to do some oxyacetylene welding for part of its “Lost Art” series. We did a lot of hands-on stuff, and Sam Smith, whom I was teaching to gas weld for the article, was taking reference notes so that he could write the piece later on.

R&T is very thorough when putting words to print. A few weeks later, I received a call from a person fact-checking Sam’s article. She asked a handful of questions, I affirmed that what she asked me was true, and that was that.

When the December/January 2016 issue arrived at my door, I read the article, and as I finished the sixth paragraph I thought, “Shit.”

Sam talked about oxyacetylene welding and the dangers involved, the ones I had mentioned. But the phrase that I knew was going to get a reaction was this: “Both oxygen and acetylene are combustible …”

No, no, they are not. It’s a mistake often made. For combustion to work you need a fuel and an oxidizer. Acetylene is the fuel (aka combustible), and oxygen the oxidizer.

During the fact-checking session the question was posed to me as “Are oxygen and acetylene combustible?” Together there is combustion. But they aren’t both combustible. It was a simple miscommunication between the publication’s fact-checker (and how would she know better) and me, and probably something I should have clarified.

It was already in print, so any correction on that front was too late. I asked Sam about it and the reaction, later, was that yeah, they received a bunch of indignant letters to the editor pointing out the mistake. I was mad at myself, and everyone involved took responsibility. But it is what it is. These things happen.

With so much information available to us in this day and age, it’s easy to get caught up in the desire to correct every inaccurate detail you come across, no matter how small. I know I still do on occasion. But maybe next time before you text the talk show or write a letter to the editor, ask yourself if it’s because you really think that person doesn’t know, or if it’s just to boost your ego.