Saturday, March 17, 2012

Cracking the Candy Shell

"You evoke such honesty," she said.

It might've started as a question. Like, "How do ..." or maybe it was a statement. I can't remember for sure.

It was the best compliment I've heard in a while. Mostly because it was so accidental.

Thing 2 got a call from a friend about coming over to play hang out. I took him there. The Mom and I chatted a smidge at drop off like usual and then, unlike usual, she invited me in. Or maybe she's invited me in before but for whatever reason I declined before. But for whatever reason, this time I accepted the invitation.

We ended up sitting outside on a gorgeous afternoon with beer and wine, it was happy hour by any civilized estimation after all. And Friday. So ...there.  Anyway, we started talking.  I'm not much for small talk, so we tiptoed around that into Big Talk. And we kept talking.

An impressive lightning riddled thunderous deluge rolled in and that didn't stop us.

We moved inside and talked Big Talk for hours.

Mid to late-way through was when she dropped the honesty comment. By which I'm still kind of floored.

She asked if hearing people be honest like that was a thing for me, because telling what she felt were secrets isn't a thing she does regularly. She's kinda private. I knew that; which is maybe why I didn't accept invitations before. Shades of the mask and all.

What I mean by that is that a lot of people in Pleasant Valley paint their masks on pretty thick. Those people don't usually like me very much. They don't invite me in, I don't expect them to. I don't have much use for  them anyway. Masks are notsomuch my scene.

Anyway, I explained that I guess the honesty thing is pretty regular for me. Historically speaking. I mean, I named myself Junior Counselor to the Free World decades ago because people let fly all kinds of things in my presence they normally ever wouldn't say out loud.

I take the things they say in confidence. I might reference them from time to time, but anonymously and only as needed. And only if I felt they were helpful.

It was a really cool evening. I love that *tink tink tink* and you crack through the surface and get to the gooey center of things. It was a good connection made.


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