Out of the mouths of babes: 'You've got a hole in your sweater!'

I went out to Learning Way Elementary School Tuesday for a story about National School Lunch Week and was quickly reminded that even hard-core, jaded, cynical, tough-as-nails-investigative reporters could learn a trick or two from a pack of third graders.

"Whatcha doin'?"

"You've got a hole in your sweater."

"Is that a camera?"

"You've got a hole in your sweater."

"Are you a reporter or a real writer?"

"Why do you want to talk about food?"

"I said you've got a hole in your sweater. Do you get time out for not listening?"

One of the most endearing thing about kids is also one of the most annoying -- they say what they think. Time, experience, and a few visits to the principal's office usually curbs that in the long run, at about the age when it goes from refreshing and funny to irritating and dangerous. Not that there's anything wrong in telling the truth or being allowed to tell it -- my whole profession is all about protecting that right.

The secret is not in telling the truth, but in how you tell it, and no one does that better than the Southern women.

Once, back in Alabama, I was at some la-ti-dah function, covering it for the lah-ti-dah group that was hosting it. I was between assignments, and I'm so sorry, Ladies who Lunch, I didn't have time to run home for my pearls between covering the dominoes tournament (not kidding here), their brunch, and the water balloon fight at the school.

One of the women cocked her eyebrow and purred something along the line of how brave I was, to sacrifice style for thrift by buying my clothes at Walmart. Again, I'm not kidding, here.

I just smiled back.

"I know -- I'm always having to choose between buying books and clothes," I said. "I guess I'd rather invest in my brain than my body. You're so lucky -- catalogs are free."

Booyah. It was fun. And -- and this is the important part -- it was true.

But that kind of fun cattiness can get you in more trouble than it's really worth, and because it is so veddy veddy carefully cultured and cultivated and planned, it lacks the freshness of a third-grader's honest observation.

Honesty can be painful, too, no matter what the source. I remembered once, when my mother ate lunch with me at school when I was in second grade, one of my classmates looked up and said, "Mary's mommy, you're fat."

It devastated her. She went home and cried and never ate lunch with me at school again. Ever.

I'm made of sterner stuff, and when the exact same thing happened to me, I was able to shrug it off. Yeah, it hurt, but it was also true. I kind of wanted to come back to the little monster and say. "Oh, yeah? You're ugly, and I can always lose weight ..." But the fact was, the child wasn't saying it to be mean; it was just an observation.

Not two minutes later, the same kid looked at me and said, "Buzz's mommy, you have pretty eyes."

How can you hate a kid like that? He tells it like it is.

With grown ups, it's a little harder, and it should be. We learn not to blurt honest facts like "you're fat" unless we have to, because we have learned that they hurt. It's one thing for my late grandmother to look at me and talk about fat girls, and another thing when my doctor does the same thing. The doc, I'll listen to, because I know his goal is to help me be healthier. Granny, on the other hand, I learned to ignore because her only goal was to hurt the feelings of every human being she was related to. (Still not kidding here.)

The real problem is when opinions and honesty crawl in bed together. Honesty relies on facts, even when they hurt. Opinions -- not so much. There are some "news" shows where political pundits spout and spew their opinion, and I applaud them, even when I don't agree with them, for having the bravery to stand up and let the world know what they believe. But when they confuse their opinions with facts, or don't have the facts to support their opinions, I flash back to my granny. I start to suspect their motives.

With kids, there isn't a motive. There's just the truth -- as they see it.

Holey sweaters and all.

-- Mary Reeves is a staff writer for the Times-Gazette. She may be reached at mreeves@t-g.com.