A Tuesday Referee

Call it as you see it.

Every word in it is holding up a different wall.

Call it. A call is half of a thing. The singer at the front of a blues room throws a line out over the tables and leaves a gap the exact size of an answer, and if nobody fills it, that wasn’t a call. That was a guy yelling. Calling it means putting your read on the table so other people can push on it, poke holes in it, hand you the part you missed. It’s the first word, offered early so the second and third show up sooner.

As you. The current you, holding whatever you happen to be holding right now, and not the version who will have slept on it. A referee who blows the whistle on Tuesday is just a man with opinions about Sunday. The call is worth something because it lands while the turf is still torn up.

See it. The phrase points at the thing and leaves you out of it. “Here’s what I see” puts the problem out where everyone can see it and puts you beside them, squinting at the same mess. A witness can be wrong about the color of the getaway car and still be a perfectly good person.

Notice the sentence is an instruction. It’s aimed at somebody else.

Flip it to first person (“I call ’em like I see ’em”) and it tends to show up right before somebody gets rude, with all the weight slid onto the I.

Said about yourself, it’s a résumé.

Said to the person across the table, it’s a permission slip, and it hands over all three at once: say it before you’re sure, say it before you’re done thinking, say it knowing the work is on trial and you aren’t.

Stay Positive & How Many Times Did You Call It Today?