Frankly Tired of Frank.

I finished reading a book last week (the name of which I’ve forgotten, as I have finished several more in the interim) that had a main character who was fond of saying “Frank by name, Frank by nature”.

The other characters got tired of the saying because he used it too often. I got tired of it because it reminded me of real life. Not, as one might think, because I know Franks who are too Frank. I’ve only known two: one, no longer with us was a friend’s father. At least for the time I knew him, he was a kind and quiet man. Never really understood the marriage but given that I was a teenager at the time all I really thought was “hmmm. I’d be murderous married to her”.

I now know a number of couples where I wonder why one nice partner is married to someone I wouldn’t even consider rooming with for a week. I think about the oddness of it more than I did as a teen, but for the most part I just go with what a wise friend once told me (hey, Hildy, how goes it?): you don’t know everything that goes on in a marriage. True enough. And just because something wouldn’t work for me doesn’t mean it can’t work for someone else. Even if I want to run and shake sense into someone about to jump into one of the “but why on EARTH would you marry HER” situations. Not my situation, not my marriage.

Boy, I sure can digress, yes? The other Frank is alive and well and I think in all the years I’ve known him I’ve heard one solitary harsh comment from him.

All of which brings me to the point of today’s post: telling someone that you “don’t play games” or “say it like it is” or that “I may be brash but I’m honest” has become the secret preamble code for “I’m a dick, and I don’t care whose feelings I hurt, or what harm I do with what I’m about to say”. I, for one, am tired of it.

Not playing games when you speak means you don’t lie, it isn’t a license to tell someone that they need to lose weight, (not to hurt your feelings or anything but have you noticed you’re fat?) and walk away having done a good deed. You haven’t done anything good at all. Fat people know they’re fat. Smokers know smoking isn’t healthy. No one gets “over” a mental illness by being told (I heard this just the other day, truly) to “pull yourself together and get on with life”.

I know this isn’t new. I know that we’re all tired of things like “nothing personal, but” followed by something extremely personal. It just seems like “telling it like it is” has become a statement that people utter with pride. And I’m bewildered.