Thursday, June 12, 2008

Honesty is not always the best policy

I've been working to retrain myself to lie. Maybe not lie, but to be a little less honest. These are the kinds of things they don't teach you when you get married that all husbands should know.

When my wife gets her hair cut and asks me how I like it, my mistake is to look at it for a minute, reflect on how it looks and tell her that I like it. My answer is always honest. If I'm not sure, I'll say so. Occasionally I'll tell her that it's new and might take me a bit of time to get used to, but it looks great. Foolish, I know. I assume that logically if she's asking me, she really wants the truth. I made the mistake once of asking one of my kids teachers (Sherri) if she'd gotten a new haircut and then followed it up with, "Do you like it?" Equally foolish.

On Cathie's haircuts lately, I've been trying to simply respond that I love it without missing a beat. I think I need to add a slight pause in there for it to seem genuine - or maybe it'll never seem genuine again and she had no idea how good she really had it with such an honest, oblivious husband as me.

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