Filthy Hooks & Unsolicited Advice
Episode 01:16:2023 - Prompt: Credibility
Where credibility took me…
A few months ago, I brought Eric’s family to a bakery I like for its not-overly-sweet almond croissants. I politely asked a woman if we could use the stool where she had draped her coat. She folded the coat onto her lap and said, “Of course.”
“There are hooks, too” I said pointing to the side of the table. My own jacket and purse were already hanging on one. The woman leaned in with the intensity of someone ready to share critical, life changing information and said…
“Hooks are filthy. You should never hang anything on hooks.”
Credibility refers to the reliability of information received from outside sources. It’s the quality of being trusted, believed… of being convincing. Scholars argue whether credibility requires expertise in a subject, or only the belief that what is being shared is true.
Was this stranger a credible source? Maybe she worked in forensics and had run the blue light over many filthy hooks. Perhaps public hooks to her are like public toilet seats to me. How was I to know? I didn’t ask her for this advice.
One of my favorite unsolicited advice memories occurred in a Michigan grocery store in 1980 when I was nine. My mother and I were in line behind a teenager whose face was riddled with acne. My mother must have noticed the boy’s items on the counter: white bread, soda, ice cream.
“Young man,” she said. “You shouldn’t eat food like that with your skin.”
His inflamed face blushed an even darker red. Mortified, I pinched her.
“Ouch, my daughter’s pinching me! I must be embarrassing her,” she announced.
Was my mom credible in dispensing this unsolicited advice?
She’s from a beauty business family, and 40 years later, we know sugar and processed foods aggravate your skin. Perhaps this was a pivotal moment in the boy’s life. A stranger, a mother, let him know he existed and that she cared. Or, maybe her words triggered an addiction to white bread he’s fought all of his life.
Have I reconsidered the threat of hooks as a result of the unsolicited advice in the bakery? Only in humor…
Stools are much filthier!
YOUR TURN: Using CREDIBILITY as a springboard, write about unsolicited advice you tell/told or have received. Don’t worry about being a “good writer”. Just get that sucker out in less than 150 words (basically the section above where I tell the grocery store anecdote).
RULES: The comments section is for posting your story. Don’t comment on my or other people’s stories. Click the HEART once you’ve read someone’s story. Let them know they’ve been heard. For more about the rules, check the About page. Any questions, bring them up in the Forum. Take a look at last week’s shares on Faith to get warmed up!
PS: If your writing routine is feeling BLAH, Amber Petty gives you permission to do a half-assed job in her 3-day event: The Perfectionist’s Half-Assed Writing Challenge. Stop overthinking, worrying over every word, and write more!
Oh and it’s free. Free! (And, Amber is AWESOME).
The Challenge starts TOMORROW.
Dead names :A birth name that you entered the world with that makes you cringe anytime anyone uses it is...especially after you lose it.
When I was 16 my friend Sharon and I used to play music at a pub in Center City Philadelphia. There was a music agent who hung out regularly and who took a liking to our sound. One evening he asked us our full names. “Sharon Dillon”, my friend said. “Shirley Hale”, I replied. I had a vile relationship with my first name, especially after being asked hundreds of times “Where’s Laverne?”. Har.
The agent exclaimed that Sharon’s name was perfect, strong, while I needed to lose the Shirley. “It’s so outdated”, he said.
That stuck with me for the next 8 years. His unsolicited advice returned every time I introduced myself to anyone. When I went to college to study music it was there that my
friend Ann (X) dubbed me “Shir-Lay-Lay”.
For the last 33 years those who knew me pre-deadname have continued to struggle with this change, but I’m thankful for the unsolicited advice that the agent gave as it became the catalyst to help me embrace my truer self.
I made a call on my flip phone after scouring the Seattle Intelligencer classifieds. I met the mechanic at his garage. “You sure?” he said, when I told him I’d buy right there on the spot the red ‘88 Honda Civic hatchback on the lift. "You shouldn't take this car until I'm done with the bodywork." I didn’t ask him nor care about the state of the vehicle: no seatbelts, repairs needed, basically totaled. “Listen, I work for Disney on Ice and we’re leaving Seattle tomorrow to San Diego, so I’ll take it right now. Here’s a check for $2000,” I said. The owner of the completely wrecked Civic looked at me for a second and took the check. Easiest sale he ever made probably. Didn’t even have to finish the job.
Like a reckless youth, I drove that car without seatbelts for 20,000 miles on tour. Credibility lost. At one point I found some free time and bought secondhanders. Cred back on track. Then I gave the car to my little brother. Safer than when I found it.