Spinach Inspired Rant

I usually try and keep a list of potential blog subjects that I might tackle. Going through my notes this morning, I found that I had written the following item down:

SPINACH BETWEEN MY TEETH: NO INFORMANTS

A little while ago, while at work, I tackled a rather large salad for lunch. There were a multitude of greens in this particular dish; spinach being one of them.

I ate this meal at around 1PM.

When I arrived home, just after 6PM, I was greeted warmly by my husband who also immediately pointed out that I had a “huge” chunk of spinach stuck squarely between a couple of my front teeth. Hardly invisible to the naked eye, I was then left to wonder why no one had pointed this out before he had.

Between the hours of 1PM and the moment when I was finally alerted to this dental disaster, I had experienced plenty of face to face interaction with many people. Not one of them had enough honesty to tell me that I had a freakin’ head of spinach wedged between my front teeth.

People, people. Many of you, apparently, were raised by wolves. I can only surmise this due to the fact that wolves do not require social norms such as telling someone that they have

 Spinach between their teeth (okay, wolves more than likely do not eat greens, but I guarandamntee you that wolves do not have a need to pick elk gristle from their pearly whites…)
 Snot/buggers falling from their noses
 Something – anything – on their face that shouldn’t be there.

Now, I get it. I am completely empathetic to your situation. You are embarrassed to tell the spinach/bugger/foreign object-on-face victim that there is a problem. You are embarrassed for them; you ascertain that they would be completely humiliated if attention is called to this situation, so you keep your mouth shut. Better to just let them discover it on their own, right? Stay out of it, right?

Wrong.

I am here to tell you that the hiccup of time that occurs during the moment that you are helping the victim in question by telling them the truth is nothing compared to the humiliation that the victim will undergo when realizing that no one in their life – not their co-workers, not the bus driver they smiled at, not even the guy at the post office, had the gumption and common decency to point out the facial violation. The victim is also then left to wonder “well, why wouldn’t they point it out – don’t they like me?” and “whatever happened to honesty?” and “well, I know I won’t be telling them if they have something in their teeth.”

That’s right, kids. If you don’t exercise brutal honesty in situations like this – if you don’t treat people the way you want to be treated, eventually you will have something in your teeth and no one will tell you. Due to your lack of spine, you have cultivated a world around you of bitter, cynical people that now could care less if you know about spinach in your teeth. They look at you and think, “Well, he wouldn’t tell me if something was wrong, so why should I help him out?”

So next time, just suck it up. Bury your discomfort in favor of the greater good. The person in question will invariably be endlessly grateful to know that they are coming across to the world with a produce section peeking out from between two of their pearly whites. Trust me.