The Spaghetti Rule

I joked a while back about seeing all these posts online where people were disappointed that liars' pants don't actually catch on fire, and I thought, "what a good reason to carry a lighter."

So while we disregard the fact that this is now the second post in a row that suggests I might be a pyromaniac (I'm not - that one time at work was mostly a joke and we were all freezing, ask anybody), I just want to bring this whole subject back up for discussion.

Full disclosure, sure, I lie sometimes.  We all do.  Even beyond the obligatory "oh, that haircut's not so bad," and, "no, those pants absolutely do not make you look like a sausage roll at all" to spare someone's feelings.

So no, dear readers, this isn't a long-winded lesson in morality, but more a deep-thoughts session where I expound on the thoughts rolling around in my own brain, if for no other reason than that I cannot stand to not know why people do the things they do.

If I were to guess where most lies come from, it isn't so much fear of consequence as fear of vulnerability.  You tell the customer who's screaming in your face about not selling him beer on a Sunday or whatever that for Christ's sakes you didn't write the law and he's being a total tool for taking it out on you, and you risk him firing back that you're an asshole for not being cool enough to bend the rules just this once, just for him, and shit man, he might actually have a good reason for being such a jerk - like maybe he just buried his dad and all he needs in the world right now is to sit back with a cold one on his dad's grave and cry - and then you will feel like an asshole.

Damn.  Now I want a beer.

Even if you're right.  Even if there's not a damned thing you can do about it.

Then there's this funny thing in relationships where we swallow all the small things, because - what's the point?  Then one day you break and you tell your spouse that they're an inconsiderate clod when they bark at you for forgetting to take the trash out, and suddenly you're hit square in the face with every. single. f*cked up thing you've ever done, some of them surely things that you didn't think were that big and/or that you've totally forgotten about and - holy sh*t.  I said that?  God, I'm an asshole.

...and then for a while you take every angry thing they can dish out because for some stupid reason, you think you deserve to be punished for everything you did.  Everything that went unaddressed.  Everything that was maybe brought up at some point but was ultimately pushed back and compartmentalized, because, who wants to deal with all that?  

Or you snap and say something horrible, and the person you snap at has no retort whatsoever - they just break down into unintelligible sobs and begin apologizing profusely.  Nobody want to be that asshole.

Or maybe nothing's said at all, until one day you wake up and you realize that you loathe the person you used to love most in the world, and at that point there's no going back.  Or, you answer the door and have divorce papers shoved in your face, while you're standing there legitimately not understanding what is going on or why.

Now that I think about it, I have been a bit of an assbutt lately.

Why do we do that to ourselves?

How hard is it to tell someone to pick up their own damned socks the first time, instead of silently gathering them up until the sight of the billionth sock 5 years down the road makes us want to suffocate them with their own foot stench marinated affronts to fabric?  Why do we pretend that all that obnoxious stuff isn't so bad, until it's so obnoxious that it destroys everything around it?

When I was a kid, my Dad put it to me this way (some poetic justices taken - but not many):

You go to a friend's house and they invite you to a spaghetti dinner. For whatever reason, you just don't feel like spaghetti right then.  Maybe you just had spaghetti the night before.  Maybe you're craving  tacos instead.  Maybe you've already made plans with someone else.  But, rather than risk hurting their feelings by just turning them down, you say, "oh, I can't, I hate spaghetti."  Which is dumb because spaghetti is delicious.  But whatever.

But, your friend, being a good friend, remembers from then on that you "hate" spaghetti.  So the next time you go to their house for dinner, they make sure it's not spaghetti.  So even if you really, really want spaghetti - too bad.  Tacos.  No spaghetti for you.

Then, later on, they catch you eating spaghetti.  "Hey, I thought you hated spaghetti!"  So you then either have to fess up to lying or pretend that whoever was cooking the spaghetti at their house is just a really awful spaghetti cook.  Which is mean.  Either way - AWKWARD.  And totally unnecessary.

It would have just been easier to be honest the first time, and told them, "Nah, I don't really feel like spaghetti tonight, maybe later."

Which is dumb, because spaghetti is delicious.  But whatever.

Side note:  this is how many of my life lessons were learned, if that makes anything clearer as far as my own ramblings go.

Anywho, I refer to this as the Spaghetti Rule:  just be honest the first time, and you'll never have to backtrack or lie more to get out of that first "little" lie.

Hey, tacos are awesome, but sometimes you just want some damn spaghetti.  

Do you really hate spaghetti and fail to find anything helpful in this blog post?  Post your complaints on my Facebook Page.