Watching Faces
Today I learned that a man named Bud loves donuts.
I was in a meeting when, all of a sudden, a bright young executive remembers that their company for some reason has a stash of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts stored away for just such an occasion. (I can never remember exactly how each given brand spells the word “donuts,” and having been raised on “Dunkin’ Donuts” I personally lean toward the version with fewer silent letters, however coarse it may be spelling-and-pronunciation-wise.)
The exec brings in the donuts in their glazed and green-polka-dotted glory, and proceeds to be the very
first to grab a napkin and plant a sugar pastry right in front of her. A breach of standard etiquette, to be sure, although the transgression is offset by the simple fact of her being one of only two women present in the room. Regardless, by the time the donuts come around my way I’m happy to oblige, seeing as there are twelve donuts and only like ten people in the room anyway, and half of them seem to be the type to be watching their body fat or blood sugar or cholesterol levels or something of the sort.
“Bud” is one of these guys. He’s obviously quite fit, but also obviously getting to the point in life where fitness can only do so much good before grey hairs and a tiny bit of a belly start creeping up on you unless you go bald and anorexic and basically become Skeletor. So Bud here has opted against the Skeletor lifestyle and instead remains successfully health-conscious, possibly of the biking type (I could definitely imagine him on a road bicycle in some sort of taxicab-yellow Spandex and a serious Lance Armstrong-type helmet). And when the donuts come around to him he sort of looks around anxiously, as if to ask the similarly aging but less similarly health-conscious guys around him (each putting on their share of pounds but not their share of road-bike-miles by the look of it), “um, am I the only one who wants one of these?”
He double-checks. Places the box strategically between himself and one of the other guys. Looks at the guy. Looks at the box suggestively. Looks back at the guy. Raises his graying eyebrows.
Then he puts on this look of near-infinite, like definitely asymptotic to some enormously large amount, sadness. I could literally imagine him being four or five and practicing in front of a mirror to get this look just right so next time Mommy and Daddy tried to cut little Buddy off from the donuts he’d have the perfect weapon to whip out on their poor little instinctive-child-care brains and retinas.
Unfortunately for Bud/Buddy, nobody but me was watching. And it’s in a moment like that where you can learn more about a person than you would from anything they’d admit to you. It’s in a moment like that where you remember why it’s so useful to just keep an eye on other people, even when they’re talking neither to or about you. People’s faces give them away all the time, and it’s key to at least know where and when to look for it.
(Image credits: mmmfruit and glasscircus)
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