I'll take that one! Politeness/truth
When I went to University, I very quickly learned to keep quiet about a number of things. This wasn't a new experience for me -you don't mention at your nice well brought up school that you eat cereal for tea, for example, or the sex abuse scandal kicking off next door and you do not mention money. Never that. It's vulgar. Just as well my parents never had any. So far as I could tell, at university and at school, you didn't talk about anything that really mattered, and you absolutely were not allowed to suggest, even for a second, that you were in anyway different. I have encountered recently similar attempts that people have made to assimilate me into a carbon copy of their life experience perhaps because any hint of difference pulls them out of their comfort zone. (I like to think of it as the "You're like me" syndrome, and I don't like it. In much the same way that I don't like it, in equal opportunity terms, when people say, "I like to treat everyone the same." Well don't. I'm probably not the same as you, and you're probably not the same as me, and that's fine.)
Anyway, polite conversation has never been something I've excelled in, finding it awkward and silly. At 18, I had seen a lot of things and I quickly realised mentioning them in passing was the equivalent of throwing a hand grenade at a plate of vol-au-vents.
For some reason, I am reminded of a TV programme called Dear John. The conceit of this programme was the continuing life story of a man, called John, who had received a Dear John from his wife. To counter this, John had joined a lonely hearts group. The group, en masse, had attended a social event. One of their group members had an unfortunate flatulence problem. Out of politeness, each member of the group took it in turn to cover for the poor unfortunate woman by saying, "Excuse me!" or "I do apologise" as if they'd been the one who had broken wind. A crass, uncouth man from the lonely hearts group got that they were being discreet and kind, but not fully understanding how to protect her, shouted out after she had machine gunned a fart somewhere in his vicinity, "I'll take that one!" - the studio audience erupting with laughter at his (and not her) faux pas.
I mention this here because I have lived the life of this man on occasion, never quite understanding fully how to negotiate the line between politeness and truth (a line that seems to run like a fault line across the class system.) For my money, in working class culture there are two choices - a heavy, unforgiving denial or a full-frontal tits out approach that takes no prisoners. There is no room for subtlety.
My mother, for example, used to ask me what I thought about how she looked. When she asked me, she required me to tell the truth. She did not ask me because she wanted me to lie or bolster her ego. She did not want to look like mutton dressed as lamb and she did not want to get it wrong. In the first term at university, a young woman called Alex (the clues are there) asked me how she looked. Not knowing any better, I told the truth. "Terrible," I said, silencing the room in a moment. Looking round, I saw pinched faces sucking lemons, and got it immediately. I'm not an idiot.
The interesting thing is that Alex never held this against me (she was really very posh indeed.) It was my uptight, middle class peers who had the problem, berating me at length after the episode. And, funnily enough, most of them were training to be teachers. Alex, on the other hand, was doing something mickey mouse because she'd flunked her private school. And she went out in the dress anyway. What did my opinion matter to her, after all?
Anyway, polite conversation has never been something I've excelled in, finding it awkward and silly. At 18, I had seen a lot of things and I quickly realised mentioning them in passing was the equivalent of throwing a hand grenade at a plate of vol-au-vents.
For some reason, I am reminded of a TV programme called Dear John. The conceit of this programme was the continuing life story of a man, called John, who had received a Dear John from his wife. To counter this, John had joined a lonely hearts group. The group, en masse, had attended a social event. One of their group members had an unfortunate flatulence problem. Out of politeness, each member of the group took it in turn to cover for the poor unfortunate woman by saying, "Excuse me!" or "I do apologise" as if they'd been the one who had broken wind. A crass, uncouth man from the lonely hearts group got that they were being discreet and kind, but not fully understanding how to protect her, shouted out after she had machine gunned a fart somewhere in his vicinity, "I'll take that one!" - the studio audience erupting with laughter at his (and not her) faux pas.
I mention this here because I have lived the life of this man on occasion, never quite understanding fully how to negotiate the line between politeness and truth (a line that seems to run like a fault line across the class system.) For my money, in working class culture there are two choices - a heavy, unforgiving denial or a full-frontal tits out approach that takes no prisoners. There is no room for subtlety.
My mother, for example, used to ask me what I thought about how she looked. When she asked me, she required me to tell the truth. She did not ask me because she wanted me to lie or bolster her ego. She did not want to look like mutton dressed as lamb and she did not want to get it wrong. In the first term at university, a young woman called Alex (the clues are there) asked me how she looked. Not knowing any better, I told the truth. "Terrible," I said, silencing the room in a moment. Looking round, I saw pinched faces sucking lemons, and got it immediately. I'm not an idiot.
The interesting thing is that Alex never held this against me (she was really very posh indeed.) It was my uptight, middle class peers who had the problem, berating me at length after the episode. And, funnily enough, most of them were training to be teachers. Alex, on the other hand, was doing something mickey mouse because she'd flunked her private school. And she went out in the dress anyway. What did my opinion matter to her, after all?
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