To Lies

Babies lie. On the plane, I watch a baby boy fall asleep in his father’s arms, and when it’s time to get off, the father has to put him down in the seat by himself to grab a bag from overhead. The baby cries as if the seat is hot and the father, as fast as he can, picks the baby up again. Immediately, the baby stops. He has to put the baby down again and again the baby cries, screams even; this is not a whimper or request; it’s a demand. As soon as he picks him up again, the baby is quiet. A liar, but quiet.

Whit is an only child and I thought that I would never encounter certain lies. Growing up, when a glass broke or the back door was left open during the summer so that we were “air conditioning the whole outside,” I could blame a brother or sister or just say I didn’t know and the blame could be, at least momentarily, reasonably shifted. Whit doesn’t have that luxury, and yet, still: Who ate the last of the chocolate chips? I didn’t. Who tracked snow all over the carpet? Not me. Who left the radio on in your room all day? No idea. Even when I say, “Go clean up the mess you left in the kitchen” without a question at all about guilt, he will say, “It isn’t mine.” Dead serious. I think he believes it.

By the time they are teenagers, kids lie in 1 out of 5 interactions with their parents. We lie more in person than in email. Men lie more about themselves and women lie more to protect others. I hear a story of a man who was raised to be honest about everything and as an adult, he has to teach himself to lie. To do this, he reads an etiquette book, which he says has one message: lie. Lie when you don’t know someone’s name. Lie when someone asks you how you are. Lie when you don’t want to join them for dinner.

Liars understand they are being asked to lie. The lie is created as much by the person being lied to as the liar. We want to believe. The baby cries and the father responds because the truth here is the baby just wants to be held and the father just wants to hold him. Our parents ask us if we did this terrible thing and we say no because the truth is we want them to love us and the truth is parents are sometimes not sure what unconditional love is.

Maybe lying is really telling the truth we don’t realize we know yet.