December 26

Two true sentences can be said about the same friend: She is almost always late. And: She almost always comes. Neither one refutes the other. Yet the first makes a different evening from the second, even before she arrives.

It is tempting simply to choose the kinder one. But the kind sentence can also be a way of saying nothing. If you only ever convert the waiting into reliability, she never finds out that the twenty minutes on the corner really do cost you something. And the irritated sentence, however precise it sounds, easily turns a habit into a character.

Perhaps it matters less which of the two sentences is truer than which one you speak from. That doesn't mean you have to keep the irritated one to yourself. Often it is even easier to say when she can sense that you have long known the other.

She comes round the corner, out of breath, already apologising from a distance. You have both sentences with you and don't yet know which will come out first.