I cannot tell a lie

Nothing special really happened this week and instead of writing another post about how I quit going to the doctor and my back has gotten better and better, I've decided to reach back into my past.

As many of you know, I hate lying. I hate it when people lie to me and I don't lie to other people. I am such a piss poor liar that if I ever did, a 9-year old deaf kid would be able to tell that I was lying. Unlike many things about me, I can actually pinpoint a specific event in my life that has made me this way.

In elementary school, I was good at math. I enjoyed it. When it came time for my math lessons, I blew through the exercises like wind through Lindsay Lohan's ears. However, when I got into middle school, I was bored to tears. The lessons were too simple, I didn't care about it one bit, and my teacher was hopelessly boring. It's not her fault, really. It's math in general. Besides the lesson itself, the assignments were more tedious than painting a box of toothpicks. 25 problems of the exact same thing which was too easy for me anyway. Not only did I have to get through the 25 problems, I had to show HOW I got the answer. . .I just knew it. . .but that didn't matter. 81 divided by 9. well, duh, its 9. but I actually had to show the steps I took to get to that point. I couldn't be bothered so I just sat in the back of the class and read my books. . . probably Hatchet by Gary Paulsen and some choose your own adventure books. I think it was at this point that I tried to read A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Twain, but that didn't go over very well.

Well, needless to say, I failed that class and like all good parents should do, I was grounded for the summer. I had to go to summer school to make up the credit. Summer school was held at my middle school Monday-Friday from 8am-noon. I had to walk there, so I left at 7:30 every morning and got home at 12:30 every afternoon. I would then do several chores my parents set up for me and was not allowed to use the phone or tv; nor was I allowed to go anywhere or have any friends over.

The way my summer school worked was that each day we do a lesson and on Fridays we take a test. If you passed the test with a high enough percentage, you could progress to the next chapter. However, if you took the test early, you could skip the lessons and go on to the next chapter. I think it was sometime in the second week that I realized this. So, instead of doing each lesson and test, I just got to school at 8, took the test, left at 8:45 and went to my friend's house. His name was Jimmy but I don't really remember much else about him except that he lived right by my school. At 12:30 I would find myself at home and complaining about how boring my school was. I don't remember exactly how long summer school was supposed to take nor how long it actually took me to finish it, but I think I was done with summer school by the end of the 3rd week. But, every morning I would continue the facade because I wanted to get out of the house and play with my friends. Everyday, I would lie to my parents and play with my friend.

My mum came home from grocery shopping one day and asked me how summer school was going. I said something like, "oh, it's so boring and I hate having to go." This is when my mum told me that she saw my teacher in the grocery store and found out that I had already graduated from the program and she hadn't seen me for quite some time. Instead of facing up to it, I am pretty sure that I continued to lie to her.

I was already grounded, my parents had done everything they could think of to punish me for being bad. Instead, my parents sat me down and simply told me, "There is nothing else we can do. You have broken our trust and once you do that, it takes a very long time to get it back, if you can at all. Just know that at one point, we would've trusted you about anything, but now if you tell us your name is Jim, [it was at that point] we can't believe you." I don't know if it was exactly those words but it was pretty close. From that point on, I have shunned lying.

I can't say I haven't lied since then, but I can say that I tried very hard to not lie after that. I realized that the one thing in my life that I have complete control over is my honor and if I can't keep that, then I'm no good to anyone. Unfortunately, with the slight obsessive-compulsiveness that I do have, I have taken it a bit too far. If someone asks me if their joke was funny, I can't tell them yes. Instead I will change the subject. If my wife asks me if something looks bad on her, I tell her. Not always the best thing, but at least people know that I'm telling them the honest truth.

This has led to other problems in my friendships. Some of my closest friends know that I cannot lie and that I can be a bit harsh when it comes to the truth. So, if they have a secret that they don't want to get out and I ask them about it directly, they have lied to me. When I catch them in that lie, they'll always come clean with me but they always tell me that the reason they lied to me in the first place was because they knew I can't lie and they didn't want anyone asking me about it. For example, I have a friend over here who teaches private lessons. These lessons are illegal and if caught, they could be fined heavily and deported. I asked them about it and they flat out told me that they don't teach private lessons. However, the next day or week one of my students came up to me and asked if I knew this person, I said, "sure, how do you?" when my student told me that this person was her private tutor, my heart dropped. "How could my friend lie to me?" I thought. It is the one thing that can turn a friend to a foe for me. When I confronted my friend, this person explained that if anyone asked me about this person, I would've had to tell the truth about it and that could've caused unwanted problems.

This is a dance I have to dance now because I have made a conscious decision to not lie to anyone. However, I have become proficient in not lying but not telling the truth too. I can dance around the truth so well that I would be a sure winner in dancing with the stars.