Artificial Sweetener

I'm not particularly good at sugarcoating things.  I have always had a tendency to say pretty much whatever is on my mind, and more often than not the content of my mind doesn't go through a sugarcoating filter in my brain first.  Nope, things go straight from raw thoughts to verbal communication with me, and that's probably not a good thing.

Since my sugarcoating filter seems to be largely missing, I make an honest effort nowadays to keep my mouth shut in certain situations, even if I think of something that I believe would be rather hilarious, but hurtful to someone else.  Of course there are also plenty of times when I've let loose with the hilarious comment, only to regret it later.

Anyway, I got to thinking about this whole sugarcoating thing this weekend while visiting an acquaintance I hadn't seen for nearly two decades.  He is actually an old friend of Mrs. Smoot's, and we learned (thanks to Facebook, naturally) that we were going to be in the same area this past weekend, so we got together for a delicious, gourmet lunch at Wal-Mart.

As soon as Mrs. Smoot's friend saw me, before even saying hello, his eyes got wide and he said, "GRAY HAIR!"  And then he laughed in my general direction.  Ok, so he's not always good at sugarcoating either.  But as we were about to leave, he said, "Good to see that you're looking... healthy."  I had to think about that one for a bit.

Was he being serious in stating that I looked "healthy" in some way?  I mean, I wasn't using a Hoveround, nor am I visibly missing any major appendages or anything.  I didn't have boogers dripping from my nose, and I wasn't hacking on my food... so I guess by all accounts, I appeared to be "healthy."

But I have a feeling, especially given that his first comment was about the gray hair thing, that the "healthy" comment was really an attempt at sugarcoating.  I kinda think he meant "healthy" in the sense of "You look like you have been eating well.  Really well.  Like way too much, lard butt!"

For the record, though, I do feel healthy.  Now where are those leftover chips from Memorial Day?