Nerd VS Wild - The white lie snowball

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The White lie Snowball

On the road I started thinking about the time a little white lie was blown into epic proportions. You see, before Courtenay and I were married I worked for a bottle shop in a fancy wine loving area. A wine sales representative would come in time for time and he was quite a large Maori gentleman. One day he comes into the store and we start talking about New Zealand. Court and I were saving for a trip there for our honeymoon and I started telling him about how Courtenay was kiwi. We were laughing and joking about Kiwis and Aussies and I was so caught up in the moment I said “Hopefully we don’t get eaten by Maoris!” His face when from laughter, happiness and gumdrop smiles to stone cold, angry, and my life expectancy had just dropped to about 5 seconds. He looks me dead in the eye and says “Well that’s what I expect an ignorant white man to say…” Panicked I say “Oh sorry I thought it was ok because Courts family is Maori.” He then smiled

and for some reason he said that is ok. That was the white lie I said to save face. The last thing I wanted to do was insult the guy.

Then things got tricky.

About 4 or 5 months later I got Courtenay a job at a bottle shop in the company I worked for. The Rep walks into my store and he says, “I just met your lovely fiancé.” I smiled as he continued to say “She doesn't look Maori at all…” The smile vanished as I remembered the little white lie. Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit – I thought in my head. My brain scrambled furiously to back away from this one. I say, “Oh, her grandfather is Maori, she looks more like her mother.” Now I have to say this poor guy has a heart of gold and I wish I had just apologized like a normal person, he says to me “It doesn't matter if you’re full Maori or 1/100^th. It’s still in her blood.” I smiled awkwardly and carried on about my business.

The next time I saw him was about a week before Court and my wedding. I told him we were going to visit Courts family in New Zealand. He said he was going to show me how to really impress Courts grandfather by showing me how Maoris traditionally greeted. So he asks me to come out from behind the counter (I’m working in the bottle shop) and says shake my hand. A lady walks in behind the Rep and starts looking at the wine displays. I reach my hand out to shake and as I do this guy pulls me towards him and touches his nose to mine then starts inhaling deeply. By this stage the lady had looked over to what looks like us two making out and practically ran out of the store. The rep tells me that he is inhaling my essence and if I do that, I’ll really impress Courts family.He asked where her family originated from and when I said Wonganui, he informed me his family was from there also… What are the odds. I sometimes look back and wonder if he knew all along and was just messing with me as revenge for insulting his people… I’ll never know.

I never had the courage to admit my lie to him. We remained with the company for about another year and Court and I had to have notes to keep up with the forever snowballing white lie. Moral of the story is, if you f**k up, it’s better to say sorry than to lie and make things worse.