Lying to Hide

I love it when people lie to me.  Obviously lying is sometimes not so nice,  a lie of convenience is just maddening.  Lies that hurt physically or mentally are dangerous and ought not to be ignored. However most of the lies I encounter range from merely annoying to hilarious.  Catching someone in a lie reveals so much about the liar, leaving them more exposed than the truth ever would have.  It uncovers fears or shame, and therein lies the humor.  It amazes me what frightens people, and occasionally tragic what shames them. Very often we flee from the most trivial events, traits or errors. It is the very thing we want to hide the most, that typically leads to lie.

Back-pedaling is a corollary.  I cannot recall what was said by a doctor by whom I was being treated, but it revealed a thought he was trying to politely conceal from me and when he blurted it out and then back-pedaled most severely; I burst out laughing.  The result was a deeper trust between us.  I knew his thoughts and he knew that I didn't hold them against him; we felt safe.

Cheating is another tangent of lying.  I went to a bridal shower last week and I was horrified to find myself cheating at a game.  I was so intent on winning, I borrowed a word from another paper to gain a bottle of soap.  In reality I just wanted to be the smartest; I wasn't the smartest, but I was the best....at cheating. What a pathetic, needy moment that was! The friend I was sitting with knew it too. I am laughing at myself,  now if only I could return that bottle of soap; ill gotten booty.

I cheated once in school, in the third grade.  I was terrible at multiplication, I stayed after school every single day to run drills with the teacher.  We had a test and somehow I had come by a little plastic rotating drum calculator; pink and yellow with big black numbers on white stickers.  I used it to calculate  9 x 6 and 7 x 8 - the tough ones for me.  I can still see my hands turning it, in the shadow of my cubby desk in the back right corner of the room.  It was such an awful moment that it stands in brilliant 3-d relief in my mind.  I never did it again; except when it doesn't really count, like at a bridal shower.  Sigh.