I’m a horrible liar. In fact, I’m probably the worst liar that ever existed on the face of the planet. The problem is that lying makes me nervous, and when I’m nervous, I stumble over words and ramble on and on and make pretty much no sense at all.
I’ve had this problem ever since I was a small child. When I was seven, I spilled nail polish onto my mother’s new carpet and then tried to clean it up with a mixture of nail polish remover and 409. Luckily I did not kill myself and the rest of the occupants of my house. (I’m just guessing here, but that doesn’t sound like a super safe combination in retrospect.) The result of my experimental clean up left a streak of neon green in a carpet that was a sandy-brown color everywhere else.
Needless to say, that was one occasion where I felt the need to lie. Unfortunately, no matter how many times I denied having any knowledge of how the carpet turned that distinct shade of chartreuse, my constant babbling and wide, avoiding eyes gave it all away.
While there have been many times in life that I’ve wished I was more adept at the fine art of lying, (like the time I dyed my sister’s hair and accidentally left her looking like a skunk) I’ve come to live with it. I know my limitations. I’ve learned to be pretty straight forward with people, and I think that has kept me out of a lot of trouble.
In reality, I wish more people had the same inability that I have. Could you imagine a world in which you could generally believe most of the things people told you? It would change the face of the world as we know it.
When politicians told you they supported the middle class, wanted to cut taxes, make health care more affordable and create more good paying jobs in our country, we could actually believe them without worrying about what they would “really” do when they took office.
When you saw an advertisement on television for a miracle diet pill that automatically made everyone in the test group lose 30 pounds in the first week, you could be amazed and really believe that the product might be worth that $99 a bottle, instead of searching for the fine print.
When you went shopping for a used car, and the dealer told you it was in showroom condition and he could make you an excellent deal, you could sign on the dotted line without that sense of fear and anxiety you get when you’re sure you’re about to be taken.
If a foreign leader said his country was not producing weapons of mass destruction, the world could sigh in relief, because he seemed like he was being genuine.
It might be an odd dream version of reality that will never, ever exist, but in my imagined image, the perfect world would be one without so many little white lies, twistings of the truth and flat-out fabrications. Unfortunately, that world doesn’t exist.