Conversation with a friend

For no good reason, this morning I recalled this little exchange from a little while ago:

I would expect you to tell me if I had a piece of food stuck to my tooth. Would you?
Maybe, I don’t know…

You wouldn’t? How about if I smelled or had bad breath? Aren’t friends supposed to tell each other these things?
I most definitely would not tell you if you smelled or had bad breath!

This is so disappointing! How am I ever supposed to know?
[Resolved: pack in more tic tacs and up the deodorant application, just in case]

And here’s the quandary: why wouldn’t one tell? If it’s a correctible issue, why make the person suffer a form of silent humiliation?

Recently a student told me of a physical “defect” a professor had – entirely correctable! – that caused her, the student, each time to look away out of piteous embarrassment. Obviously the student couldn’t say a word. But shouldn’t a friend point it out?

Or, in this particular exchange, was the friend really saying “I wouldn’t tell because, actually, there is a certain staleness about you that I can’t quite put my finger on…”

That would be nasty. I come from a country where body odor is a real problem, especially in tight spaces on hot days. Like the child who is a victim of excessive spanking and who resolves, therefore, never to swipe a hand over a kid’s rear end (a resolve that all, btw, should have), I have my own resolves here and I wont venture out in public without a morning shower (too many of my fellow country men and women do).

But supposing that the interaction between Tom’s of Maine natural stick and myself was no longer a successful one, I would expect a friend to pull me aside and suggest change. I’d be embarrassed, they’d be embarrassed, we’d slap each other on the back a few times and I’d scoot out to the store and try a new one.

Would I be equally honest? No, Poles don’t have to be honest here. Poles talk in innuendos all the time anyway. I’m spared a reciprocal obligation. It’s a benefit of being foreign-born.