Total Disclosure Day, Part Deux
It wasn't a bust
On Monday, probably because I had contact with very few people, my self-proclaimed Total Disclosure Day was a success, with an asterisk. I said yes when I meant yes, and no when I meant no, and I was careful not to elaborate on either answer. I attended meetings and mostly kept my mouth shut, which is probably the secret to telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth: Simply talk less.
I am not a big liar, as in a world-champion one, but I value people who tell the truth no matter the outcome. I have been known to obfuscate when questioned directly. This is not the go-to stance of the deservedly famous. Our history is lousy with people known for their honesty, but how much of those stories are even factual? That story about a young George Washington saying “I cannot tell a lie” over chopping down a cherry tree was, in fact, a lie. It was part of a campaign dreamed up by the best-selling parson, Mason Locke Weems.
I shall have no such adoring biographer painting me in the best light possible. All I will leave is a pile of newspaper columns and a few books in which I have tried to be truthful, and (or so I should hope) a limited number of people who can argue about what I said that time I was asked such-and-such. I won’t be there to mediate. I’ll be dead. So I’d like to leave as few of those instances as possible.
On to your Tuesday…
Learning that "No" is a whole sentence and doesn't need further elaboration is, in itself, a victory.
I have been telling you stories the last couple of years about people that I know or have known and I often refer to them as goofballs
Staying on the truth train I can say that the reason I call them goofballs is because I, in fact, am a goofball myself
Who else but a goofball marries someone that , never mind that I didn’t love, I didn’t even like
And I knew that before I married her
I have been observing goofballs in their natural habitat for so long I consider myself the Dian Fossey of goofballs
I’m thinking about writing a book with the title goofballs in the mist