Charming Vs. Sincere

Ongoing dialogue between me and the Center of the Universe:


Me: You don’t listen to me.

CoTU: Of course I do. Where do you think I come up with my excuses? If I weren’t paying attention to what you said, I wouldn’t know what to rebut! And if I weren’t listening, I wouldn’t have anything to try to weasel out of.

Hmmm. He has a point.

Meanwhile, here’s a little story about CoTU you might like. Some years ago we went to see “Into the Woods”, a wonderful musical by Stephen Sondheim that blends a lot of fairy tales into a very entertaining theater event.

In the course of the play, Prince Charming makes a very flowery statement to his paramour, who is flattered, and wants to know if he really means it. He answers, “I was raised to be charming, not sincere.” That was the highlight of the evening for CoTU, and he has quoted the line frequently ever since. And, after all, he did have a long career in sales and marketing, despite his engineering roots.

So keeping that in mind, today he showed me a draft of an e-mail he was sending his cousin. She’s very far away, and they’ve been out of touch for years. It was actually a very lovely and personal message.

I said, “Wow, I didn’t know you were capable of that. You wrote that all by yourself?”

“I did,” he said. “And it wasn’t all that painful, when it comes down to it.”

I said, “Are you sure you didn’t plagiarize something from a website, like maybe “Sincerity for Sale” dot com? Or, “Personal Letters Anonymous” dot com, or even “You Tell ‘Em, We Sell ‘Em” dot com?” I mean, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for a new business venture.

“I should have looked,” he admitted. “I could have saved myself a lot of time.”