Pants on fire

I am not a frequent liar, not because I am morally opposed to lying per se, but because I don't like to spend a lot of time doing things I'm not good at. And I am not at all good at lying. I get caught up in the details and end up tying myself in knots over minutiae. Also, I have a very expressive face.

I lie so rarely, in fact, that I have almost total recall of lies I've told in the past. Like in high school when I told my parents I was going with my boyfriend to see Jurassic Park: The Lost World and instead went to his dad's law office to make out on the couch. I thought I was safe because it was a movie my parents wouldn't dream of seeing, but for some reason it came up in conversation for weeks afterward, and of course I had nothing to say about it except something vague about how it was just like the first Jurassic Park, except, you know, set in Manhattan. I ended up confessing the lie to my parents years later—they, needless to say, had completely forgotten the whole incident.

The inability to lie is generally seen as a virtue, I know, but every once in a while it would be convenient to be able to do it convincingly, if only to maintain the element of surprise. All last week I was so busy lying and thinking up more lies that I couldn't even blog. Not once. I was so full of secrets that I wouldn't have known how to write without them all spilling out.

See, CameraMan is conducting this show, and I wasn't going to be able to see it (because I am on the other side of the country), and I was just sick about it. So, I secretly begged for a release and GOT one, secretly offered up our hypothetical first-born child to United Airlines for a last-minute plane ticket, and secretly planned a trip to see his Sunday matinee and spend two whole nights with him (and the Bossy Cat, obvs). All week long I played the sad long-distance girlfriend, throwing in little extras for verisimilitude (Do you think anyone will video it so I can watch it later?). I even invented a whole rehearsal schedule and cocktail party for Saturday to cover the time I would be traveling, all the while plotting with a friend at the Trap to meet CM at Clyde's that night.

I think I did pretty well. I lied my face off all week, and he had no idea. Until about an hour before I arrived, when he called my phone 3 times and all 3 times it went straight to voicemail. He's pretty smart, that CameraMan, and he figured out the only reason my phone would do that is if I was on a plane. And he was right. So when I walked into Clyde's he wasn't as surprised as I might have hoped, but it was still a pretty great moment. I'd say the surprise was a success.

99. Fly across the country (or the world) to surprise someone.

What's so bad about lying, anyway?

4 comments:

  1. Congrats on executing the surprise, and crossing something else on your list!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I can tell you for sure that I'm not lying when I say I got a lot of smiles from your last blog. And also I wasn't surprised to hear that CM is really smart. But the thing I noticed mostly was how pleased I was to know that you got on that plane and flew across the country to be there for CM's show! A story to go down in the archives of Muller-Melear.
    Grandma

    ReplyDelete
  3. I ended up confessing the lie to my parents years later—they, needless to say, had completely forgotten the whole incident.

    Needless to say, we've both forgotten the confession too. Are you sure you're telling the truth?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Mama: YES! I'm sure! I think it's safe to say that you not remembering me telling you something is no indication of whether I did or not.

    ReplyDelete

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