Truth And Consequences

Woke up sore this morning. This, the end result of spending five hours yesterday walking at a pace that would make a snail look snappy. I knew ahead of time that a day spent looking at antiques along the streets of Walnut, Iowa, would cost me, at least physically if not financially. A bum heel saw to that. But waking up with sore hips and a funny shoulder, too?

Well, it's no wonder that I'm feeling a bit ashamed of myself right now.

While taking Eric to his job at Ideal Grocery just moments ago, I saw the reason for my shame--an abandoned toilet on someone's front lawn. Well, maybe not the reason for my own aches so much as the symbol behind my shame.

Seeing that unhinged toilet (with faux wood seat!) left me feeling a bit unhinged myself. I have no idea who lives at the house--a house that otherwise looks neat and tidy--but I found that I couldn't look at that toilet without knowing some things I really didn't need to know about those people.

Really, we civilized people can only take so much honesty and frankness.

Most days, I tell myself that I'm young and vibrant and maybe even relevant, too. My occasionally limping, achy body, though, has another story to tell. One that may be a little closer to the truth.

Is it any wonder that people aren't particularly enthusiastic about the truth?

Most of us learned this peculiar lesson early on in our lives. Maybe it was in Mrs. Strobel's third-grade class, where you could smell and see the poverty on the classmate with the ill-fitting, dirty hand-me-downs.

Maybe the ugly truth confronted us one night in the form of an open window at the neighbor's house, where ugly words and violence slipped between the mesh squares of the window screen.

I remember a sign at the old Christiano's Pizza place on 56th and South that read "Tip-ping is not a city in China and De-nial is not a river in Egypt." As a kid with nary an extra coin in my pocket, I was comfortable ignoring those important messages.

As an adult with a few more coins in her pocket, though, maybe I should sit up and pay attention to why the truth is often described as "ugly."

My guess is that we're blaming the wrong thing, here. It's not truth that is so ugly. It's our denial of it.