...and don't panic! The Know brings you advice during housing
A true friend is always there for you, especially when you're drunk.
Miss Quit regresses to her childhood this week as the prospect of beginning the "University of Life" looms.
Some people are blessed with the ability to coat the more unsavoury aspects of the truth with a palatable tinge of, well, lies. Not me. It’s mostly why I could never be a lawyer. Or an actress, despite having full capacity for acting like a Drama Queen (or so I’ve been told, but the jury is still out on that one…)
Usually, not lying would be considered a good thing, a virtue even. But when the truth gets you into trouble, as I have repeatedly found to be the case, being a bad liar seems very much like a curse.
I am tempted to just rip off Ian McEwan’s Atonement for this week’s quit. For those unfamiliar with the story, (whom I implore to stop reading this right now, run out to Borders, buy a copy and a coffee, and read it on the spot; or if you can tolerate Keira Knightley and her pout, get the DVD), it basically revolves around the cataclysmic effects brought about by a little girl’s reportage of what she believes to be the truth.
To avoid spoilers, my synopsis will end here, but I think it stands as a good example of what I’m alluding to. We have all, in our misguided attempts to help or see a small justice done, told a painful truth. Admirable as that may be, the results are usually somewhat damaging.
The problem is, as my housemate and fellow McEwan fan pointed out, that the majority of life, both familial and social, is built on unspoken lies. Now there’s a painful truth if ever I heard one.
A good example of this is the phrase "the elephant in the room" - something everyone knows but never talks about. Or as I want to call it, Ugly Baby Syndrome (UBS): when you are presented with some distant aunt’s-cousin’s-sister’s offspring, which resembles a tiny shaven Ricky Gervais, and have to pretend to coo along with everyone else who are all secretly thinking "oh dear lord, its staring right at me, please make it go away".
Every family has a case of UBS sitting uncomfortably in their living room. Or many. This week I was abruptly presented with one of my own household’s ugly babies. Metaphorically speaking that is. It’s one of those that just refuse to leave.
For the sake of the privacy of those involved (including my own personal safety) I shall refrain from relating the grim details. Suffice it to say that I neither cooed nor threw the baby out with the bathwater.
Some things should never be said, no matter how true they may be. Sometimes, not saying anything is just as revelatory and, in this case, incriminating. I couldn’t quite bring myself to state the ugliness of the baby as another involved party had, but I didn’t refute it either. So in a way I both succeeded and failed this week’s quit, by staying silent.
If silence is golden, then mine could not help but be a tarnished shade of gold.
It’s so easy to be objective about honesty, and most of the time it may well be the best policy. Yet in a real-life situation, rife with unattractive infants, it’s a very difficult practice to implement. Sometimes staying quiet is the only way to limit the damage amidst the screaming truth. Even then, trying to dry the tears exasperated by a lack of comforting lullabies may prove futile.
It’s enough to put you off having kids. Anyway, before this metaphor gets completely out of hand, I shall show it the door by closing with a final thought: the truth may hurt, but eventually, it will always out.
The best we can do is hope that, when it is delivered, kicking and screaming, peace may eventually be restored with a quiet rocking of the crib.
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