He called me a liar.
To my face. Five times, I think.
Okay, strictly speaking, his words were, “You’re lying to me
right now.” So he didn’t call me a liar,
per se, but semantics aside, he
called me a liar.
Lots of unusual adjectives could describe my subsequent
emotional reaction: indignant, furious, incredulous, aghast, livid, exasperated. I say “unusual” because those words do not
usually apply to me. Very seldom do I
become so angry that I can feel my pulse in my collar bones. I don’t throw things, I don’t hit things, I
don’t scream at things. Well, not
normally, anyway – there are definitely a few instances in my life of each of
these things (ask the 8th graders I taught a few years ago about the
screaming – ugh).
Fast-forward to the end of the altercation, after a
moderated discussion, when the accuser, an indirect superior of mine, shook my
hand and asked if I had any Italian blood in me, because he apparently thought
I was hot-blooded.
Hot-blooded, huh?
That’s another new one. No no, I
don’t have any Italian in me. A bit of
Irish, perhaps. Though the real reason I
got so angry was because you called me a liar and I wasn’t lying. Ever think about that??
(That last part I didn’t say out loud, but boy did I think
it!)
Why did I get so angry?
Why did my lips purse, my heart accelerate? Why did I begin breathing loudly through my
nose?
He called me a liar!
And I wasn’t even lying!
To be accused of lying in our culture seems to be the worst
of charges. Former President Bill
Clinton didn’t get impeached because he had an affair, but because he
lied. Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens are
trying to beat perjury raps. Roxy from
the musical Chicago shot her lover because he lied to
her about his connections in the jazz world.
Examples abound. Lying seems the
worst of all sins. Do whatever you want,
so long as you remain honest about it.
We esteem honesty to the point that we often overlook other
significant problems. We can forgive you
if you do something bad, but if you do something bad and then lie about it –
well, that’s a whole ‘nother story.
Perhaps we vilify dishonesty because we just like to know
all the details, a voyeuristic joy in having the inside scoop. Perhaps we really believe that honesty is the
best policy. Perhaps, deep down inside,
we’re all supergood people, and our souls cringe at even a hint of subterfuge.
Perhaps. But I think
that really, we just don’t like being cheated.
Something in our bones despises being tricked. The humiliation, the idea that others may be
mocking us, is simply too much to bear.
Suddenly we’re eight years old again on the playground at school, picked
last, letting the ball fall right out of our glove. We want to run and hide, but we can’t because
we remember we’re all grown up and grownups don’t do that sort of thing. Once again, the serpent cons us into eating
the apple, and we feel stupid. Deep
down, we fear that we’re actually stupid, and it turns out we actually are.
Yeah, I guess that is pretty humiliating. It’s not surprising that I responded how I
did. Part of it, too, was that I was
sure that, if the man actually knew me, he would know that I wouldn’t do such a
thing. He didn’t bother to find out about
my character; he simply assumed I was lying.
Hot-blooded?
Apparently I’m capable of it.
Everything you wrote in your first two posts are true of me as well (except for my lack of pre-schoolers and my legitimation of my TV obsession with a master's degree in it). Hear, hear.
ReplyDeleteAnd my fave Toad the Wet Sprocket lyrics bridge the two, I think: "They knew we were lying, but they smiled just the same. It seemed they'd already forgotten we came." I was always (since I first heard "Walk on the Ocean," anyway) fascinated by such a banal reaction to obvious, polite lying, and the fact of the lying to begin with.