Can I Be Honest?
Today I went to Red Lobster with my dad and grandma.
About ten minutes after the waitress brought out our food, she stopped by our table to ask us—with a confident grin on her face— “how does everything taste?”.
Unfortunately for her, she didn’t know what was coming. I have a dirty habit that my family and friends have encouraged me to kick for quite sometime, but I just can’t help myself… I’m an addict. As soon as the waitress asked that question, I snapped into character.
“Can I be honest?” I replied.
In an instant, the waitress became squirmish and afraid.
“The scallops…(pause)…are AMAZING.”
The waitress let out a big gasp, as if her vitality was dependent on how my sentence would finish.
As usual, the waitress laughed, explained that she thought I was going to say the food tasted bad, that she’s relieved, blah blah, etc.
Once she walked off, I had a sudden realization; a realization that never occurred to me after performing this act at least 50 times: we are afraid of the truth. We are accustomed to not being told the truth. Not telling people the truth is the rule, not the exception.
It struck me—my playful deception was less about humor and more a ritualized reflection of our societal discomfort with honesty. Each instance of feigned disappointment before revealing satisfaction mirrors our broader societal contract where truth is often unwelcome. Why do we brace for the negative? Why must genuine praise be disguised in critique to be digestible?
This act of theatrical truth-telling underscores a larger issue: our interactions are padded with anticipations of insincerity. We perform in a play we didn't choose, reciting lines to characters who might not care, while truth waits in the wings, understudied and overlooked.
Watching the waitress's relief, I realized the real addiction I needed to kick was not the dramatic reveal at the dinner table, but the deeper habit of expecting reality to be sugarcoated. How liberating it might be if, when asked how everything tastes, we could answer simply and plainly, without fear—offering a taste of something genuinely unexpected.
