Let Lying Liars Lie

By LESLIE DINABERG — Oct. 16, 2009

I try to teach my son that honesty is the best policy, but truthfully, I don’t always tell the truth.

I’ve got lies on my mind this week because I saw “The Invention of Lying,” which, despite a great high concept — in a world where people can only tell the truth, one man discovers he can lie — is a wildly uneven mess of a movie. But it did make me think about how many white lies I routinely tell in the course of an average day.

I contemplated the idea of keeping a lying journal, then tracking when I was tempted to lie and whether I would be able to resist the temptation to fib if I was more aware of it. But why lie to myself? That’s way too ambitious and I wouldn’t last a day, let alone a week.

From the time-saving auto-response "I'm fine" after an innocent query of “How are you doing?” (Which I’m sure the grocery store checker and the people in line behind me would much prefer to “I just ate a donut from the display case and killed a man, and I’m not sure which is worse.”), to the “Of course I’m not too busy” response when a friend calls and they desperately need to talk, I’m a scarily skillful liar. Innocent little fibs like this are second nature for me.

Whether it’s the art of the artful dodge — when my son asks what happened to the M & M’s he had left over from the movies, and I remind him that he needs to unload the dishwasher — or the skillful sidestep — when my husband wonders what happened to the $100 cash he just got from the ATM and I tell him how handsome he is — I’ve come to realize that lying is one of the few things I do rather gracefully.

It’s just my luck that lying — the one useful skill that comes naturally for me —also comes saddled with an entire storage unit full of guilt and ambivalence.

At least I’m not alone.

Research by Dr. Robert S. Feldman of the University of Massachusetts Amherst found that in an average 10-minute discussion, 60 percent of people lie approximately three times. Of course, he may have just made that up.

Moms are the worst offenders of all. "We are surprised by how often parenting by lying takes place," said researcher Kang Lee of the University of Toronto, Canada. "Our findings showed that even the parents who most strongly promoted the importance of honesty with their children engaged in parenting by lying," said Lee, who reported her conclusions in a study published in last month’s “Journal of Moral Education.”

Yes, such a journal really exists. And now that I’ve confessed my lying proclivities you probably won’t ever find my name on their masthead, unless I lie about my lying, which I would never do unless I had a really, really, really good story idea that would be perfect for their publication.

I’m even more ambivalent about cultural lies, like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. I sort of want to be honest about them, but I don’t want my son to be the one to burst some other kid’s bubble, and he’s scrupulously honest enough to enjoy doing just that. Plus, I don’t want to get in trouble from the other parents.

This may be why I floundered a bit when Koss recently tested his suspicions about Tabitha. (Tabitha is his Tooth Fairy, who has been writing him notes and sprinkling pixie dust on his dollar coins for almost a decade. I say if you’re going to perpetuate a lie about a fictional character, you may as well go big.) He told us that he wasn’t going to put a particular tooth under his pillow. For four nights in a row there was no tooth. We checked. Then finally on the fifth night he decided to “test Tabitha” and put his tooth under the pillow. We failed to check. The next morning when Koss said he knew there was no tooth fairy, I mumbled and fumbled for a response, finally settling on: “Are you sure? Maybe she just got stuck in traffic."

Smoooth. I guess I’m not as good of a liar before I’ve had my coffee. That’s also when I catch myself hastily hiding certain gruesome newspaper headlines underneath the sports page before Koss comes to breakfast, which of course makes him all the more curious about what I’m hiding.

While the socially expedient lies come easily, I get a bit rattled under pressure to prevaricate. A few weeks ago when Koss’s school was on lockdown, I told him everyone was safe before I knew it was true. I hoped it was true.

So maybe there’s a bit of wishful thinking in my lies.

I’m in good company here too. An online survey found that 91 percent of women said that as they get older and more comfortable with themselves they lie less often. If I wasn’t 29, this might apply to me too.

=

Share the biggest whopper of a lie you’ve ever told with Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com.

Comment on this article

Subject:

Body:

Poster:

Enter text seen above:

Oh What A Tangled Web We Weave.... : 10/16/2009

Unable to recall an interesting whopper of a lie of my own, I can share my first experience at a tender age with the tangled web of deception. My Aunt was a concert pianist with a weakness for eccentric hats. It was well known my Father loathed these ghastly appendages with their feathers,veils and strange what-nots. However he always joined in the head nodding chorus of family approval. Learning to practise my new talking and social skills one day I piped out a shrill,"I love your hat Auntie Em, even if Daddy loafs it ! " As in one voice my red-faced Mother and assorted siblings cried out, "She means he LOVES your hat-he LOVES it! " Probably no supper for me that night, plus a lecture on white and " true lies, and oh- yes-and the bit about telling a lie which leads to another.....and another......

Elizabeth

---

Fun.....gets me thinking! : 10/28/2009

For the boys it has to be father christmas!!!! Throught the years I have rung bells late at night outside bedroom windows,dragged sacks of gifts down from garage rafters, eaten cookies by the dozen, drank pints of milky concoctions-who knows what was in them,left muddy footprints in front of thje fireplace,the list is endless....the point is they were believers...funny really to think they are 18 and 13 yrs and we just never talked about whether he really exisited it was just a non conversation.... My my lie was so convincing it just had to be true!

kerrie k-w

---