Someone just died in the McDonald’s drivethru. What’s that? I made that up? Yeah. No one died, but apparently someone ordered the entire restaurant and I regretted not going in on foot even though it was piss pouring rain outside. To make matters worse, the biatch that cut me off going into the drivethru was smoking a cigarette whose foul poison infiltrated my car. What’s that? My boyfriend is a smoker!? Ugh. I know! I said I’d never date a smoker, and truth be told, it really grosses me out… except when he does it. I’m such a hypocrite. And a liar.
Mom, I borrowed your gaucho pants… but we both know this is a lie. I stole them. I stole them because you took my brothers and abandoned me by going on vacation to British Columbia, only one of my favourite places on the planet, without me. What’s that? I could have gone but opted not to? WHO KEEPS POINTING THESE THINGS OUT TO ME!? Stupid conscience. Also, why is ‘!?’ not an actual button on a keyboard? It should be.
Why do we lie? Lying usually starts from a very young age. It starts with fantastic stories (or in my case, really really dumb self-preservation stories) and then later morphs into this trail of white lies in order to protect the innocent and/or guilty. Like J telling me he’s cutting back the cigarettes. Yeah. Friggen. Right. I’m not blind. Plus, I have the nose of a bloodhound thanks to the creature we planted in my uterus. So there. Don’t lie to ME, mister.
I remember telling my first lie. Okay, correction. The first lie I ever remember telling is this (there were surely many before my memory kicked in):
Back before I went to school with unicorns and leprechauns… I mean, faeries and gnomes… I mean, kids that drew with block crayons (minus the black ones) and wore sloganless t-shirts (don’t get me wrong, I love my Waldorf education. It’s just easy to make fun of), I used to go to school with normal children. You know, the kind that were allowed to have real chocolate rather than carob (dammit mom, we always caught you in that lie. Carob tastes nothing like chocolate!), play with plastic toys and wear Ninja Turtle t-shirts (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, heroes in a half shell, TURTLE POWER!). Well, there was this girl in my class named Jessica. I don’t remember why I wanted to be her friend, but for some reason I did. She never paid me much mind, but then
one day she loaned me her book. I was so excited! You can imagine my surprise when shortly after handing it back to her, the teacher approached me, Jessica in tears by her side, asking me if I’d taken Jessica’s four-leaf clover out of her book. Um, whaaaa? Instead of telling the truth, which was simply that I hadn’t noticed any clover and if it fell out of the book it was certainly an accident, I told the teacher that it was just a regular, run of the mill, nothing special three-leaved clover. In retrospect, I know a simple, “I didn’t realize” and “I’m so sorry” would have sufficed for the teacher, but hey, I was five. Besides, everyone knows she wouldn’t discover the luckiest clover for at least another 10 years.
Sorry. Couldn’t resist. This picture came up in my search for a clover. By no means am I suggesting that Jessica is a stoner. I don’t even know her last name, or really remember what she looked like even back then.
Another lie from that era (1988-1989) was the day I panicked because I broke my friend’s pen. It wasn’t one of those ordinary pens. It was one of those super cool ones that you clicked and the nib switched out for one of a different colour. Understandably, with such a rare piece of technology, my friend was very upset that I broke her pen. In a panic over the potential loss of my friendship, I assured her that it would be alright! She needn’t worry because my mom repaired pens for a living and could certainly tend to her precious writing accoutrement. I can only imagine what my mom thought when I handed her the broken pen and told her this tale. I’m assuming it went like this: 1. Shakes head, 2. Thinks, “My child is such a dumbass.” We went out and bought my friend a new pen that night.
I can’t wait for the doozies baby H will tell.
So yeah. Mom, I borrowed your gaucho pants. Good luck getting them back.