Love and Marriage: Lemon

This is a story of a particular brother D and his wife S.

This true story happened when I met S’s parents for the first time while we were dating. Being an important meeting, I had reserved a nice table at Skate’s Restaurant. I met Mr. and Mrs. Choo for the first time, exchanged greetings, and chatted while waiting for our meals to arrive. Of course, I’m trying hard to make a good impression, so I’m trying to appear very mature and responsible.

When the food came out, we prayed, and then S proceeded to grab the lemon slice and squeeze it onto her seafood plate. I have no idea how this happened, but a very strong stream of lemon juice shot out from her lemon right into my right eyeball. I mean, I was wearing glasses, and she was sitting next to me.. So the margin of error was quite small – the juice had to come in between my face and my glasses, and it had to have the right angle to get into my eye. But it somehow did, and I immediately started to tear up. It was quite painful. I immediately stopped talking, because all of my attention was now devoted to trying not to cry out of my right eye, but it couldn’t be helped. I was trying to make a good impression on S’s parents, but how could I, when I had 2ml of lemon juice in my right eyeball?

I tried to just seem normal, but my right eyelid started to involuntarily flutter as I tried hard to keep my eyes open. At that point, I had basically two choices: 1) continue pretending like everything is normal, which was a difficult task, given that streams of tears were flowing out of one eye, or 2) just be truthful. And I just chose to do the right thing and be truthful, since I couldn’t hide it anyway.

“Ooowwww! You squeezed lemon juice right into my eyeball!” I said, as I took off my glasses and wiped my eye with the napkin repeatedly. I wasn't being overly dramatic. I was just telling it like it is.

I noticed that the table had suddenly turned. I was no longer in the position of weakness; now S was feeling mighty awkward in front of her own parents, trying desperately to get her bearings. Her parents were no longer looking at me; they were now focused on S, wondering how she would respond. She looked quite confused and disoriented by the whole experience, but I knew that deep down, she thought that it was really funny.

That experience taught me that it’s always good to tell the plain truth, because trying to cover up a lie is painful -- like lemon juice in your eyeball.