A Little Too Much Honesty

A Little Too Much Honesty

I believe in being honest. I recently asked one of my classes if they took the spare change from vending machines. They are poor college students, so most of them said “Yes”. I told them it wasn’t their money, but one student insisted it was like finding money on the street. I assured them when I was a starving student, I, too, used to take the money left by someone else in a vending machine. It was found money. But now, I usually leave the change for someone who really needs it.

I’ve also asked students why they hate Abraham Lincoln. They look at me and wonder why I am saying such a strange thing. I tell them in the building where I work, enough students leave pennies lying around for the custodians to pick up that they can usually have a pizza party at the end of the year. The custodians tell me they pick up sixty or seventy dollars in a year. I tell the students it just shows a rampant disrespect for our sixteenth president to just leave him lying around like that. I tell them people in the future will wonder why we hated pennies so much.

I also asked the students if we could be too honest. One guy reminded me we don’t want to answer one question in particular too honestly. Guys know what question I’m talking about. If a woman ever asks you “Does this dress, these pants, this skirt, this Mumu, make me look fat?” There is no correct answer, but it does make me laugh when I think of Chris Farley’s response from “Tommy Boy”. You can never say it out loud to anyone, but he is immortalized on film saying, “No, your face makes you look fat”, or something like that. Honesty is a relative quality, and the closer the relative, the more dishonest you may have to be.

Really, though, honesty is overrated most of the time. No one wants you to be honest with them, and most times, you are asked to lie for someone else. Tell me you didn’t tell the boss his last idea was great when you really thought it was inane.

I’ve lied and taken the blame for someone else’s poor driving and denting of a van. I’ve lied about my weight, but it’s not what you think. I weigh about 180 now, but all during high school I was probably about 130 or 135. But there is no way I would have admitted that to anyone. I think I put 140 on my license just in case someone checked. So when I got fat in my late twenties, no one was happier than me. It may sound strange to be glad to carry around extra weight, but I am so much happier being fat than skinny.

Most of us aren’t really comfortable in our skin. We have a perfect image we really want to be, and almost no one is ever happy with how they are right now. When we ask others, they try to assure us we look fine, our lives are fine, and that we should be happy with our lives. But there always seems to be someone else happier, skinnier, richer, or whatever than we are. It’s a sad way to live, and while we wish our lives away, we are really being dishonest with ourselves.

Can I just be happy with this day, with this body, with this spouse, with this job, with this life? There are really only two choices. Happy, unhappy. Most of us choose to spend our days, weeks and years yearning for something we will probably never see. My wife gave me a great compliment the other day, and I don’t think she realized she did. She said to me, “But you don’t care what other people think about you.” She may be right. I think there is a small part of me which vainly wishes praise, but it is dominated by the comfortable part of me which want to wear pajama pants to Walmart. She’s even brave enough to be seen in public with me, since nearly everyone we know is aware she has to put up with me.

Maybe I’m just a little too honest. I should probably care more about how I look, but when I pointed out to some of my colleagues I had the hanger wrinkle on my dress pants. This particular woman was incredulous. She couldn’t believe I didn’t use special hangers for pants. They are even called pants hangers. I don’t use those for pants. Well, I do hang my pajama pants with them. That is my wife hangs them up for me. If it was my choice, I would probably just fold them up. Honestly.

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