Lies my father told me

My already frizzy, stickieout hair stands on end whenever I hear the words, “Oh, you know me, I can’t lie.” Guess I don’t know people as well as they think I know them. How interesting would this world be if people really and truly couldn’t tell lies? What I like most about the folks who say they can’t lie is they are actually lying when they lay that line down. Every single time. We’re all guilty of a non-truth or two. Ya, I’m sure there might be a newborn or toddler or a person with a psychological disorder who can’t spread it on a bit thick, but I do laugh when I hear the line. I want to ask those delusional folks, “Be honest, do these jeans make my butt look fat?” or “Is that Cover Girl on your face?” or “Do you think the comb-over really hides that bald area?” You get the picture, one way or another, we all lie. I think it’s some kind of defence mechanism. We’re hard-wired to embellish. Maybe what the non-liars actually mean to say is, “You know me, I can’t lie effectively.” Or “You know me, whenever I lie my voice trembles. It’s a dead giveaway.” Ya, that’s what they mean.

Seriously, I think we’d make a bigger effort when we’re getting dressed in the morning if the world was made up of people who couldn’t lie. I wouldn’t be as tempted to dress from the pile on the closet floor and more inclined to put some thought into my colour pallette. Think about it, bridesmaids would never again be decked out in those pouffy disasters of lilac and vomit green satin, festooned with sequins and bows, if lies were never told. I can think of one aquateal- blue-ish sateen monstrosity with a diaphanous overlay speckled with tiny rolled up flowers that matched the garden of pretend flower buds jammed into my lacquered hair. The dress was tailored to make my “frontage” look like scud missiles at the ready. A dress, the bride-to-be assured me, I would wear again and again and worth every penny of the $150 (in 1960s dollars) I spent on it and I’m not even counting the hideous “dyed-to-match” shoes. If you know me, and many of you do, I’m not a dress-wearing kinda gal and it was really, really difficult for me to say, “Shucks, I can think of a dozen places I might wear this beauty.” When, deep inside, I wanted to say, “Are you on drugs? ‘Cuz, I want some of what you’re taking.” The poor groomsmen didn’t fair much better on that big day, all of them wearing tuxedos and the bride’s sick-to-the-stomach colour scheme was carried over into cummerbunds, pocket-poufs and bow ties. Be still my beating heart, what’s not to love about a guy wearing shiny, patent leather slippers and a cummerbund? Not one person in the bridal party said what they were really thinking. They just sucked it up and looked forward to the “open bar.” I do remember saying, at the last fitting, “There’d better be an open bar and some good looking guys on the other side of the altar.”

So, lying, we all do it. Yes, we do and yet, we expect the truth all the time from everyone else in our lives. We expect our politicians to make campaign promises they’ll keep, no matter what. We expect retailers and manufacturers to cut the crap and tell us the truth about how much something really will cost us at the checkout, without the mail-in rebates, the invasion loyalty cards and buy-one-get-one bunk. Of course, of course, we dream about the day our insurers say and then put into plain-written English, “Here’s the list of stuff we won’t cover, no way, no how. And here’s the even larger list of things we will cover.” We lie and then we preach to the kids about how much easier life would be, for everyone, if they’d just tell us the truth about who they’re with and what they did or didn’t do and where they went and when they came home and why they did what they did. We demand our provincial and federal leaders to do what they said they were going to do, when they were going to do it and for not a penny or moment more than they said it would take.

Go figure. Now, for the record, seriously, do these jeans make my butt look fat? You can be honest with me.

theresa@wellingtontimes.ca