Abolish Caution or, Why I Now Order Prawns Like A Boss
It was a special occasion and my family decided to go to the local steak house for dinner to celebrate the said special occasion.
I was eyeing up the seafood menu, at the king prawns, specifically. I had my first nibble of those juicy underwater dwellers at a barbecue the weekend prior and had developed a taste for them.
I ordered them with much excitement and anticipation. An eagerness for food that is borderline unhealthy, to be honest.
The waitress finally came over. Here we go.
She served me soup and walked off as fast as she had set it down.
Now, I’m usually very polite in restaurants, and in general public for that matter, but this was mildly urgent.
“Excuse me! HEY! Sorry, excuse me! Miss! Yeah, sorry. I didn’t order soup, I ordered the king prawns as a main. Thanks.”
I held out the dish for her to take with a look that confidently said:
Hey, it’s fine. These things happen. People get mixed up, don’t take it personally. I’m not angry.
My parents snorted and the waitress smiled.
“Actually, that’s your finger bowl. For when you eat your prawns.”
Red as a cooked crustacean, I set my bowl of lemon water back on the table.
“Oh. Then thank you.”
Everyone else at the table spluttered with laughter.
Why can’t we look this silly all the time?
Why can’t we just let go and ask the stupid question and get laughed at and feel like a dick head?
Sure it’s mildly embarrassing, but the moment is fleeting in comparison to the rest of your life.
And you learn. Boy, do you learn. You can be sure I know all about what happens when you order prawns. No more surprises, just the immediate nonchalant dipping of fingers, as if I’d been doing it right my whole life.
Having said this, people, including myself at the best of times, are simply not willing to make such a small sacrifice; a moment’s stumble for a lifetime of strides.
There’s too much of a pressure to be right all the time or to appear in control.
I’m reminded of a creative team I studied with at university. They were given the chance to go and get work experience at Saatchi & Saatchi Auckland. That was big; a very good agency with a very prestigious name and some highly skilled creatives within.
They came back to uni from a brainstorm session with the agency. They had to come up with ideas for the campaign they were doing that went across a range of media, including something called ‘eyelites’, something which they knew nothing about.
“What’s an ‘eyelite’?”
“We don’t know!”
“Haha, didn’t you ask them?”
“No, of course not.”
“Uh, why not?”
“Dan, you don’t ask them those sort of silly questions. They’ll think you’re stupid. I mean, how bad would that look; not knowing what ‘eyelites’ are?”
“I highly doubt they’d care, you simply ask and they tell you.”
“No, it doesn’t work like that.”*
I left the conversation totally baffled. Later, they found out that eyelites are what the guys at Saatchis called bus shelter ads, or what we had always referred as ‘adshels’. So that creative team knew what they were all along, they just called them a different name. Had they asked straight up, they’d have found out earlier and avoided unnecessary stress.
As I’ve pointed out in a previous blog post, as a young person, the time to ask the stupid questions or make the silly assumptions is now, when you have little to lose in terms of your dignity and everything to gain.
Besides, they make for great stories to bring the next generation of timid juniors at ease when you become a ridiculously successful watchamacallit.
“Oh, I was just like you once, except worst! I screwed up everything! I couldn’t order prawns without looking like a dipshit.”
Just think of it this way: compare your possible embarrassment to the rest of your life. It’s will be a mere blip on the timeline that is your existence. Just like the entire universe couldn’t give seven shades of snot about what shirt you wear today. Once you get a little perspective, you’ll calm down a wee bit.
Remember, no one knows everything, so there’s no point in trying to appear that you do when you don’t. It’s ok.
So I’ve continued to order prawns with confidence to this day.
Except that one time at the Japanese restaurant, where I plunged my hands into a bowl of miso soup.
*Let me just point out that this is basically more-or-less how the conversation went. I’m not a tape recorder.
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