When I was about 16, I really pissed off a young woman who turned out to be a frenemy (though we didn’t have a word for it in those days: they were just a friend who wasn’t that great to be around. This one kept getting mad at me, telling me off and then a few days later she’d come and apologise, only to get mad at me again soon after.
I couldn’t be bothered after a while.
I think what I’d done to really annoy her was this:
She had spent a lunchtime moaning about how her parents never believed her and questioned her when she said she was going out as if she was lying about where she was going.
Now, we all knew she was lying about where she was going — she had told us that she was.
My mistake was to say: But why should your parents believe you if you are lying to them. Surely they are treating you the way you deserve to be treated.
I’m sure it must have sounded pretty prissy coming out of a 16 year old’s mouth, but I didn’t mean it that way. It just seemed so obvious. If you’re lying to someone, you can hardly blame them for realising it.
In the end it’s a case of the emperor having no clothes and the dislike of having your nakedness pointed out.
Halfman hated me for that too. When I finally realised what he was doing/had done to me, I think he expected I would just fade away into the background but I didn’t. I pointed out what he was doing and although he never gave me the satisfaction of acknowledging I was right, I know it killed him to be told he wasn’t wearing any clothes.
Even with small things. I caught him stalking me one night on Facebook — I could see an old profile of his pop up in my window because – in those days – he’d been classified a ‘close friend’ and fb loves to tell you when they’re online too.
But I couldn’t block him from seeing anything because he suspended his profile in between uses.
When I told him I knew what he was doing, he first denied it, then told me he didn’t respond to demands and then pretended he didn’t know how to reactivate it even though he’d clearly done it many times before.
I admired his ability to cling to his not-actually-there clothing.
But I did wonder what the inside of his head must look like to allow him to keep on lying even when caught out so obviously.
As I age I find it harder and harder to bother not telling people when they aren’t actually clothed; when their reasons/excuses are ridiculous.
I no longer sit politely and clap when a speaker fills a room with ridiculous excuses for being cruel to people just because that’s what we’re trained to do. I get up and leave. Or I stand and turn my back.
Or I find a way to out them in my work (I write stuff for a living).
I think this is a new measure for me — I will measure my honesty by how willing I am to declare the emperor naked when his meat and veg are clearly on display.
And my innate Canadian politeness should see me through any consequences.
Except for a white lie situation, is it ever rude to tell the truth?
1000 days 