勵(lì)志英語美文：15件事只有直率的人懂

　　You’ve probably heard the expression “Be careful what you wish for,” and this is a good guiding principle to live by when dealing with a blunt person. If you want their opinion, you’ll get it. Straight from the hip and dead-center. Anyone with a reputation for being the blunt one in their family or group of friends knows that it’s alternately a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, people value your honesty; on the other, it’s a miracle you can ever tell anyone what you think because you’re often too busy chewing on your own foot. Here are fifteen things only blunt people can understand.

　　1. They apologize a lot

　　Bluntness can often be mistaken for rudeness or unfriendliness. When they make a less than flattering remark about a friend’s new outfit, it’s because they believe in the golden rule that friends don’t let friends leave the house wearing a skirt the color of cat vomit. The problem is that this well-meaning fashion advice isn’t taken all that well, so blunt people very often find themselves repeating “I didn’t mean it the way it sounded,” so often that they should just have it printed on a t-shirt or tattooed on their foreheads.

　　2. They hate long stories

　　If you’ve ever watched an episode of “The Golden Girls,” you’re probably familiar with Rose’s St. Olaf stories about the mule who skied backwards on buttermilk and the innumerable ways to cook herring. Inevitably one of the other girls—usually Dorothy—would interrupt to snap, “Get to the point, Rose!” Blunt people have no problem speaking their minds, so whenever someone else can’t come to the point quickly enough, they lose their patience, and they tell you pretty bluntly.

　　3. They regularly insult people

　　Have you ever read Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice? Do you remember Mr. Darcy’s first proposal to Elizabeth Bennet? When speaking of her irritating family relations, he could have said, “Your mother might want to learn to hold her tongue in company.” Of course, he instead had to say, “Did you expect me to rejoice in the inferiority of your connections? To congratulate myself on the hope of relations whose condition in life is so decidedly beneath my own?” (NO wonder she refused him). Blunt people have no problem telling you what they really think of you, even if (and often especially because) they love you and just have no clue how to get the words out. They don’t have the most control over their tongue at the best of times, so when passion overrides better judgement, you might want to invest in some serious body armor. It’s for your own protection.

　　4. They’re everyone’s favorite fashion consultant

　　You might not like it when they express distaste about your latest wardrobe choice, but that’s not going to stop you from dragging your blunt buddy to the mall when you cruise the latest sales. If you’re going to spend your entire paycheck on that new pair of jeans, it behooves you to make sure they don’t make your butt look like it deserves its own zip code. If you’d just taken your blunt friend shopping with you in the first place, you’d never have bought the cat vomit skirt.

　　5. They appreciate snark

　　If a blunt person is going to throw a verbal zinger at you, they’re going to enjoy themselves doing it. When you ask your boyfriend if he wants to see the new foreign film showing in theaters, and he knows that you know full-well that he doesn’t, why would he simply say “no thanks” when he can respond with “I’d rather inflict myself with a thousand paper cuts and take a bath in lemon juice”? This is a far more eloquent way to express both his abhorrence for the idea and his annoyance with you for even suggesting it.

　　6. They’re hilarious when they’re drunk

　　Alcohol loosens people’s tongues, so can you imagine what it does to a blunt person? Think of that hysterically funny scene from “Liar Liar” starring Jim Carrey, when his office colleagues get him to reveal what he thinks of them. They think he’s teasing them, but he absolutely means it when he says of one of his coworkers, “Simmons is old. He should have been out of the game years ago but he can’t stay home because he hates his wife.” This is the blunt person after a few martinis. They probably won’t want to know what they said the next day about someone’s new husband or the glorified slime on a shingle calling itself pizza served at a party, and fortunately for them, they’re the blunt one, not you. You’ll never have the guts to tell them.

　　7. Their sincerity is rare and golden

　　Since people usually associate bluntness with sarcasm or negativity, a blunt person’s sincere kindness is sometimes all the more treasured because when they pay a compliment, they always mean it. I’m reminded here of an episode of “Will and Grace” in which Grace is (as usual) freaking out over an upcoming date and asks Will for last-minute advice. He replies with characteristic bluntness, “Keep your shoes on at the table, eat butter with bread, and if the server asks if you want fresh pepper, don’t ask if it’s free.” After a pause he adds gently, “and you look beautiful.” Since blunt people follow a strict code of honesty, you won’t catch them giving you an insincere compliment.

　　8. They show affection with bluntness

　　It’s been said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but with a blunt person, it’s more likely to be a sarcastic comment that shows you how much they value you. This is because they know it takes a thick-skinned person to withstand their bluntness, so when you show up at a party and they say, “Did you mean to get a haircut that makes your head look like a salad bowl?” they might not love the haircut, but they definitely love you. They only say those things because they know you’re tough enough to handle it.

　　9. They’re really uncomfortable around crybabies

　　Since the blunt like to use their friends’ egos for conversational target practice, they like to peg the overly-sensitive people in the group before they sharpen their tongue. The salad bowl haircut, the cat vomit skirt, the Mr. Darcy-like snark about your obnoxious relatives—they’re all the blunt person’s way of testing you in the fire to see if you can put up with it, and if you can’t take the heat, go home. Nobody likes to walk on eggshells, especially the blunt person, who’s probably about as adept at gingerly stepping over eggshells as a tap-dancing elephant. The truth is that they’re not doing this to be inconsiderate; quite the opposite. Blunt people don’t really want to offend anyone (who doesn’t deserve it) so they might toss a tactless remark or two at you just to see how hard it lands, and they’ll back off if they see it really hurts you.