deconstruction

“Obviously you don’t like it,” I tell him.

“Well, it needs a lot of work” He hears me hmpf! and then says, “You want my honest opinion, don’t you?”

“I wasn’t asking for your HONEST OPINION.” I say the words in my most mocksome British accent. “I was just reading it to you.”

He rolls his eyes so hard they’re bound to hurt his head. “You really cant take it, can you?”

Maybe he’s right. Maybe I do see ‘criticism’ as one of those ugly nine letter words like polyester or glutamate. But in my defense, he’s not offering me much else – no construction at the end of it all. Just “Mmmmm, no” or “I don’t like it” or, as is his recent habit, silence.

I should be grateful. I guess. Grateful he’s not building me up to make a fool of myself like those poor sods on ‘American Idol’.

It’s hard to hear you’re bad at something, even when that’s not what you’re being told. But how do you improve if you don’t know where or why or how?

Time to grin and bear it, I guess.