Kev Kennedy's Blog

Ulterior motives

There’s a joke that women who see a guy holding a bunch of flowers think ‘Oh, what a romantic!’, while men who see the same guy think ‘Oh, he must have screwed up!’ Depending on who tells that joke, either women are naïve, or men are soulless unromantic morons.

Of course the truth is it might be a bit of both.

But, while flowers may or may not be an indicator of guilt, I am beginning to develop an aversion to ‘bribery’. What do I mean by that? Well, there are one or two people in this world who never just ask – they always try and butter you up first. And I have two people like that in my life at the moment.

One will turn up with some huge favour but before she asks it, will always present me with a cake. I’m not averse to cake. In fact, I love cake. But I don’t love cakes that are always followed by a request for a favour. They don’t taste so good for some reason.

The second uses compliments instead of cake. ‘Hey, you’re looking good – like the t-shirt’, he’ll say, and my heart sinks and I know what’s coming next. The next innocuous-sounding question will be something like ‘What are you doing Saturday?’ and I need to be doing something or I’ll be driving him to the airport or further.

I would prefer it in both cases if people would just ask. Otherwise I reach the point where I don’t want to eat cake and I don’t believe the compliments and life in a cynical, cakeless world is pretty depressing.
 

Created on Tue 2nd June 2009 10:07