HERB BENHAM: Key to staying happy is to set bar a bit lower
| Friday, Jul 30 2010 12:58 PM
Last Updated Friday, Jul 30 2010 12:58 PM
Hard to go to Milt's Coffee Shop without carving up a chicken-fried steak but go I went, and nary a chicken-fried steak did I eat.
I'd forgotten how nice that place is. Clean, bright, cheerful and Milt Huggs himself sitting at the counter. Milt, his name on the neon sign way up in the sky, is as good as a movie star.
One of his longtime waitresses greeted and checked me in.
"You look younger than your picture," she said.
She smiled. She seemed relieved. Relieved in the same way that you are, when you wake up from a nightmare and realize that the monster that has been chasing you not only has one head instead of two, but has slinked back into the closet, where it lives between nightmares.
What is the appropriate response to "You look younger...." It sounds like a compliment and when someone compliments you the polite response is, "Thank you very much."
However, when I noticed that the confusion in her eyes was followed by relief, I wasn't sure that "Thank you very much" was the appropriate response.
When you drill down, and you don't have to drill far, what she might have been saying was, "You're not as homely as your picture promised that you would be."
If we had stopped there, it would have been fine, but I suspect she may have been pausing mid-sentence.
What she could have meant was, "You're not as dinged up as your photograph makes you out to be, but you're not showroom ready either."
This car hadn't been trashed, but it hadn't been garaged either. It would take more than a car wash to restore its luster. You might have to think about a fresh coat of paint and some new rubber.
Thus, when she said, "You're younger than your picture," her subliminal message might have been: "You look younger but you are not young. There is nothing young about you. In fact, you and the Bristlecone pine grew up together."
In other words, hers was less a comment about youth and more about being less old. Less old is not young. It's still old, it's just not as old as what was possible given the evidence first presented.
There may be a strategic advantage in being the subject of an unflattering photographic. If the bar is set low enough, there is little possibility of not being able to exceed expectations in person.
This is the Bakersfield way of doing business when it comes to describing the town to outsiders. Rather than saying, "This is a beautiful, interesting, textured town with lots of great ethnic restaurants," take a different tact.
Say something like, "This is a miserable, hot, ugly place to live and if you last a month here, you ought to have your head examined."
Then, after they settle in and realize it's not as bad as you described it and that it really does have some natural charm, they'll be elated and surprised.
In other words, not young, but not as old as you could be. Count your blessings, or at least the curses that were fewer than you imagined.
These are Herb Benham's opinion, not necessarily those of The Californian.
