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My Leading Aluminium
Dec. 19th, 2010 10:24 pmToday I read one of those articles in which the journalist does (or doesn't do) something for a certain period of time. You know the sort of thing: no using technology for a day, no buying things for a week and so on. I always think they make the journalist doing them sound horrible. The one in which the man didn't carry any money for a week involved him getting his friends to buy all his meals, which made him sound like a free-loader and didn't really give him an insight into what it's like to have no money.
Today's article was about a woman doing twenty-four hours of 'radical honesty', that is, always telling the truth. Part of it is okay: she tells a woman whose garden she passes that her roses are beautiful, she has a nice chat with someone on the bus and she tells her bed she loves it. She's a waitress and she tells off some customers who don't leave a big tip and one of them comes back and leaves some more.
Then there are the exchanges that leave a sour taste. She goes into her local shop and asks the owners why their shop is always empty and never has new stock. The owners just shrug. And this, when she stops for an after-work drink:
A man comes over and starts grabbing my arm. Tells me he is 73 years old. Says he is dying. 'Prostate cancer,' he wails. He starts to roll up his pants to show me some kind of physical degeneration - but I stop him. 'Old man,' I say, 'you're 73. You gotta die sometime. Now leave me alone.'
I don't know. I wouldn't like to be pawed by a strange old guy either, but I think there is a line between being honest about that and being a raging bitch.
Today's article was about a woman doing twenty-four hours of 'radical honesty', that is, always telling the truth. Part of it is okay: she tells a woman whose garden she passes that her roses are beautiful, she has a nice chat with someone on the bus and she tells her bed she loves it. She's a waitress and she tells off some customers who don't leave a big tip and one of them comes back and leaves some more.
Then there are the exchanges that leave a sour taste. She goes into her local shop and asks the owners why their shop is always empty and never has new stock. The owners just shrug. And this, when she stops for an after-work drink:
A man comes over and starts grabbing my arm. Tells me he is 73 years old. Says he is dying. 'Prostate cancer,' he wails. He starts to roll up his pants to show me some kind of physical degeneration - but I stop him. 'Old man,' I say, 'you're 73. You gotta die sometime. Now leave me alone.'
I don't know. I wouldn't like to be pawed by a strange old guy either, but I think there is a line between being honest about that and being a raging bitch.