I’m helping a friend of mine hang a paddle type ceiling fan on the vaulted ceiling in his kitchen. I’m on top of a twelve foot step ladder finishing up the job when in walks his wife and her best friend (who is hot, and whom I’ve met several times before) with pizza from a local carryout place for dinner. Her friend, we’ll call her Lisa, is eating a slice of the pizza as she walks into the kitchen (she must have grabbed a piece out of the box while the two were bringing the food home).
I see Lisa eating the pizza and I also notice a large, what looked to be pizza sauce, type of spot on her upper lip. I was about the let her know, as a courtesy, that she had some sauce on her face. I know how embarrassing it can be to walk around with food or boogers on your face without anyone saying anything. Something stopped me from speaking. It may have been the subconcious feeling that her closer friends should be the first to say something or some other feelling, I don’t know.
I get down from the ladder a few minutes later. Meanwhile Lisa had wandered into the living room to see what was on TV. I go grab a piece of pizza and wander into the living room along with the rest of the group. “Lisa still has the sauce on her lip”, I think to myself. “Wait, that’s not sauce, the poor girl has a very large festering cold sore on her lip”, I silently concluded.
How damn embarrassed we would all have been if I had blurted out “Hey Lisa, you got some sauce on your lip!”, when I first saw her come into the kitchen from up on the ladder.
Thank God I didn’t say anything!
If you were me and you had blurted that out how would you feel?
If you were Lisa and I had blurted that out how would you feel?
Gimme a sense of the overall implications this could have had and what sort of havoc I avoided by biting my tongue.
It depends on what type of person Lisa is and what type of person you are. If you said “hey Lisa, you have sauce on your lip” and she simply said “nah, it’s a pain-in-the-ass coldsore” and you said “oh, bummer - well then, never mind - can you had me a slice?” it would’ve ended there…no harm, no foul, everyone with good intent.
If she was more self-conscious and/or high drama, obviously it could’ve gone much worse. But honestly, I wouldn’t see that as your fault if you pointed it out in an obvious good-deed sort of way.
But, then again, I am the type of person who points stuff out like that and tend to hope that others would do the same for me…
I tend to look at what I believe was their intent. If a comment is made in an honest mannor, I take it as such. If I suspect it was prompted by malice, I tend to respond in kind.
Yeah, it is nice that you avoided that faux pas, but I agree that it probably wouldn’t have been the end of the world if you had said it.
Back when I was heavier, I had a bit of a paunch (thankfully gone now), and once some poor sweet little old lady asked me if I was pregnant. Kind of embarrassing for both of us for a minute there! However, I knew she didn’t intend any harm, and generally don’t take offense easily, so in the long run it really wasn’t a big deal.
We were at the beach once, partying. A guy asked me if I had a joint (I didn’t), but I told him HE should roll one up, he had (what looked like an ounce) bag in his sock.
He pulled his sock down and the “bag” was an incredible looking tumor or growth or something… He took it well
I think the accepted rule of thumb is not to comment on a woman’s appearance if you are positioned twelve feet above her head. This is how you avoid such embarrassing faux pas as:
“Hey, Lisa, you have lint caught in your cleavage.”
Or
“Imagine that, the guys are right, you really couldn’t see your feet in the shower.”
Okay, look, the thing is that when you start a post with a 12-foot ladder, a ceiling fan, and an implication of disaster averted, the ceiling fan, the 12-foot ladder, OR BOTHmust feature in the rising action, if not the eventual denouement.
Please keep this in mind for future posts. Just fighting ignorance here.
