Brutal Honesty Day, A Short Story by Ken Coffman

Clive stopped on the concrete steps and turned to look back over the stairway, the sidewalks and the street. Kids, most of them black, milled around the common area, emerging from mostly-older, battered cars. They wore backpacks, sneakers and colorful jackets. This urban neighborhood was not a rich one, but the kids looked well-fed and spiffed up for school, with the girls’ hair braided with beads and the boys wearing clean jeans, though huge and drooping off their asses in the current style. A set of flags rippled over the brick school entry—U.S. and state. A patch of struggling ivy climbed the brick wall that towered five stories overhead.

The concrete walkway was dotted with trampled blobs of gum.

Blah.

It was Brutal Honesty Day. Clive sighed.

Always a tough day.

But there was no relief; the job had to be done.

He turned and continued up the stairs and entered the school. The assigned classroom was on the second floor and was filled with chattering third-graders. As he walked in, he made eye-contact with the exiting teacher. He could not read her blank expression, but she seemed unhappy. She pulled the door closed firmly behind her.

Clive stood in front of the class and tapped on the teacher’s desk. The clamor quieted only slightly.

“Could I have your attention, please?” Clive said with a firm voice.

He turned and picked up a dry erase pen…and scrawled his name on the white board.

“My name is Mister Colgate,” he said while writing.

A girl in the front row raised her hand.

And so it starts. Brutal Honesty Day. I have sworn to tell the whole, unvarnished truth.

He took a deep breath and pointed at her.

“Do you have a question, young lady?”

“Who are you?”

“As I wrote,” he gestured over his shoulder, “my name is Mr. Colgate and I work with an international non-governmental organization which funds programs for selected children.”

Several kids in the back of the room still had not taken their seats and were talking. One of the kids strutted in a circle.

“My name is Mister Cockgate,” the kid said as stuffily as he could manage in imitating Clive’s English accent.

The boys laughed heartily. Ignoring the insult, Clive continued speaking.

“The name of the organization is a little difficult—I’ll write it down.”

He turned and was about half-through with writing the name when a wad of soggy paper hit the board with a thunk. A nasty mass of sodden paper slowly slid down the white board’s surface—leaving a trail like a slug.

“Okay, I guess my name is unimportant,” he said. “Please take your seats.” He lifted his heavy backpack and dropped it on the teacher’s desk. “I have some things you might be interested in. How many of you like television?”

Most of the kids raised their hands eagerly.

“I have Zune video players and headsets.”

A boy in the middle of the desk area raised his hand.

“Do we get to keep them?”

“Yes, you can keep them.”

The video players were small, with three-inch screens. They came with earbuds in little plastic bags. Clive passed them out.

“Can we watch them now?”

“I have some things I want to talk to you about, but if you prefer to watch a movie, that’s your choice. The memory has Shrek and a few other shows recorded for you. If you prefer video games, there are some. Can I get the people who want to watch a video or play games to move to the back of the room, please?”

The room was filled with milling children. Of the thirty kids, seven sat in the front rows clutching their Zunes and looking at Clive expectantly. Two girls and five boys.

Seven out of thirty. Twenty-three point three percent.

For an instant, he couldn’t prevent a scowl from decorating his face.

It is what it is.

One of the seven changed his mind and eagerly tore at the plastic as he wandered to the back of the room.

Bloody hell.

Six.

The room was eerily silent. The only sounds were creaking chairs and tinny music escaping from the earbuds.

“I am going to give you a little puzzle to solve.”

A boy wearing close-cropped hair and a Lakers basketball jersey raised his hand.

“Is this a game?”

“What’s your name, young man?”

“Richard.”

“Richard. Okay. No, this is not a game. I am going to draw some symbols. This one that is straight on the left side and curved on the right side represents an AND function. When the two inputs on the left are ones—then and only then—the output on the right is a one. This symbol with a curved side on the left represents an OR function and the output is one when either of the inputs on the left are ones.”

He drew the symbols on the board with little charts to describe their function.

“The charts are truth tables—they describe what these symbols do. Now, I’m going to draw a group of these symbols with inputs and I want you to tell me what I will get at the output point.” He pointed. “Here.”

“This is stupid,” one of the boys said.

He got up and moved to the back of the room.

Five.

Clive passed out a photocopied sheet so the kids could work through the logic circuit.

After a few minutes, a boy raised his hand.

“I got it,” he said.

“What’s your name?”

“Ray.”

“Very well, Ray. What will the output be?”

“It’s a one,” he said proudly.

“Okay,” Clive said. “That’s good.”

Richard raised his hand.

“I don’t think there is an answer.”

“That’s interesting, young man,” Clive said. “We’re talking about ones and zeroes, how can the output be undefined?”

“It’s because of this line here that goes from the output back to one of these or-gate things. We have to know what that was before we can figure out what the output is.”

“That’s stupid, Richard,” Ray said. “The output should be zero when we start, that’s the only thing that makes sense—that means the output is a one.”

“If we don’t know what the output starts as, then we don’t know how it ends up. Mr. Colgate did not say anything about how we started.”

“You’re always arguing about stupid stuff that doesn’t matter, Ricky.”

“I’m trying to think about what Mister Colgate said and he didn’t say anything about how this puzzle starts out, so we can’t know.”

“Mister Colgate, who is right?” Ray said.

“What do the rest of you think?”

The other three kids looked uncomfortable—fidgeting in their seats and shooting glances out the window.

“I don’t know,” one of the little girls said. “I tried but I couldn’t figure it out.”

“Tell Ricky he’s full of garbage,” Ray said. “The answer is one isn’t it?”

“Yes, Ray,” Clive said, “the correct answer is one.”

Richard stood up and leaned over his desk.

“But,” he complained, “if the output was originally a one, then the answer would be different. You didn’t tell us nothing about how this thing starts, so you can’t prove I’m wrong, can you?”

“Tell Ricky to shut up. He’s stupid.”

Clive scratched his head and pondered the situation, then laughed.

“I see Richard’s point, Ray,” he said. “In the strictest sense, he’s correct too. If you don’t know the initial condition, you can’t determine the output state. It’s undetermined. To be rigorous, I should tell you the initial condition. The problem assumes the initial states are zeroes, but that’s not explicit in the question, is it?”

Richard did a little dance and waggled his index fingers at Ray.

“I’m nine times smarter than you, Ray. Maybe ten.”

I can only choose one, but screw the rules, I like this kid.

“Okay, I have a card for both of you.” From his backpack, he pulled two laminated cards and handed them to the boys. “Go to the website address on the back or ask your mum and dad to call the toll-free number—we’ll explain to your parents what we have in mind for you.”

He zipped up his backpack and pulled it over his shoulders.

A little girl raised her hand.

“What about us, Mister Colgate?”

Brutal Honesty Day.

Damn it.

“What’s the difference between being smart and acting smart? If you accept wise guidance, live by a solid moral code and avoid the worst of life’s pitfalls, then you can enjoy a great life. But, there are many hazards and dangers in our world and we need our very best minds working on solutions.”

“Did you hear that?” Richard said. “I have a superior brain.” He did a little dance and spun on his heels—stopping with a finger pointed at Ray’s head like a pistol. “Bang, you’re dead. I’m the sharpshooter, baby.”

Ray leaned his elbows on his desk and covered his face.

“I hate you, Ricky,” he said.

Clive opened the doorway and stepped into the hallway. Leaning against the far wall, the teacher waited.

“I hate how you separate the kids,” she said. “People shouldn’t be inspected and graded like cuts of beef.”

Clive shrugged. “I don’t like it either, but it’s my job. Good luck with getting the video players out of their hands.”

“Yeah, thanks for nothing,” she said. “They’ll be hopeless for the rest of the day.”

“See you next year,” Clive said.

With her hand on the doorknob, the teacher took a deep breath before opening the door and going in.

Notes on Brutal Honesty Day

AP: Honesty pays, but it doesn’t seem to pay enough to suit everyone.

Aside from everything else, I love the idea of a day in which everyone is honest. It would serve well the individual and the society. Or maybe not. Why do you think people are not honest on a regular basis?

KLC: Are you kidding, Adina? The maxim is that crime pays, not honesty. Why are we dishonest? Because it profits us in some way. We all want something for nothing.

The parts that interest me most are the facts we’re unwilling to face straight up. I put this quote in Alligator Alley:

A few of us now know from the closed-system experts that the golden rule doesn’t work. Those few of us who are rich and who really have the figures know that it is worse than one chance in one hundred that you can survive your allotted days in any comfort. It is not you or the other fellow; it is you or one hundred others. And if you are going to survive…you’re going to have to do it at the expense of others. So, do it as neatly and cleanly and politely as you know how and your conscience will allow.

—Advice from an “uncle” to R. Buckminster Fuller in 1913 as related in Utopia or Oblivion

Unfortunately, many are in a hopeless position and it’s often not anyone’s fault, it’s just the way it is. Were you born ugly, stupid or poor? Well, I’m sorry, but you’re not going to be Johnny Depp or Jennifer Aniston. Watch football on TV and be happy.

AP: You brilliantly capture a fault with today’s society. Consumerism—everyone is a cog in this complex system and it’s a tragedy that children are nothing but a blank canvas to be exploited by marketers.

KLC: I was trying to make a point that opportunity might present itself, but you have to pay attention—be ready to answer the door. Some of the kids in the back of the room might have been smart enough to earn a ticket out of poverty and obscurity, but they’re too busy watching TV or playing games and don’t have the context to understand what might be good for them in the longer run.

AP: Having grown up in a communist country as I did, I experienced the political assault on our subconscious. We were supposed to be brainwashed into being brave little Marxists. Marketing as we know it, targeted at the buyer, was nonexistent. And yet, the buzz about the Snickers candy bars or electronics or you name it seeped into our brains—we wanted the best product and to have better things when compared to the Joneses.

None of the Marxist propaganda worked but remote marketing from the west did. Interesting, no?

KLC: Yes, it is interesting how commercial styles and fashions and trends seep through borders and cultural barriers. Why are Marlboro cigarettes popular in Japan? Why are pop songs from around the world almost always sung in English? When my visitors come over from China, why are they wearing wingtip shoes, business suits and neckties?

AP: Can I quote Santayana?

Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its function is to make the worse appear the better.

—George Santayana

Do you agree?

KLC: I didn’t get to where I am today by arguing with George Santayana. Can I volley back with another of his quotes?

Intelligence is quickness in seeing things as they are.

—George Santayana

AP: It’s interesting how you focused on kids in your story.

“I have some things I want to talk to you about, but if you prefer to watch a movie, that’s your choice. The memory has Shrek and a few other shows recorded for you. If you prefer video games, there are some. Can I get the people who want to watch a video or play games to move to the back of the room, please?”

The room was filled with milling children. Of the thirty kids, seven sat in the front rows clutching their Zunes and looking at Clive expectantly. Two girls and five boys.

Seven out of thirty. Twenty-three point three percent.”

With the risk of sounding like an old cliché with ‘back in my day’, but it’s only in the past 15-20 years that I heard about ADD or ADHD when referring to children. I think the paragraph I just quoted speaks tons about what the real problem is: the assault of the entertainment industry gives our kids the attention span of a moth. Would you agree?

KLC: We live in a very wealthy society. In general, our kids are not breaking their backs in a field; they are sitting around watching TV, playing video games or sexting each other. Normally, we are rich enough to freely do what we want—and it turns out we want to laze around.

We are closer than ever to having the ultimate in free time to achieve a final human destiny, but it looks like that destiny consists of sitting on a couch with our eyes on a video screen and our minds in idle mode—while stuffing our faces with junk food.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? Let’s go get some ice cream.