CITIZENS Barbara's
Column The Salem Evening News Even Presidents lie ... By Barbara Anderson Listen, kids, the people who say this are all
admitted liars, so maybe it isn't true. Maybe there are people who either tell the truth or
refuse to answer, but never lie. Maybe they believe that lying is morally wrong, or they
realize that one lie can permanently damage their credibility, or they simply don't care
enough about other people's opinions to bother avoiding the truth. Of course, telling the truth in court can get you in
serious trouble if you've committed a crime, so you also want to avoid breaking the law.
And just say no to extra-marital sex, because telling the truth about that can get you in
trouble too. I told a lie once, not about a crime of course, but
because of a teenage crush. It happened in 1957, my first year of high school.
Because of a scheduling conflict I was in a freshman English class with
"commercial" students who were classified already as "not
college-material." Since I had no intention then of going to college,
which would have delayed my plan to see the world, I didn't mind. In fact, I was happy to
be seated near a boy I'll call "Flint" because he looked like the frontier scout
on the TV series "Wagon Train." Flint was not only good-looking, he was smart and
nice. But I suspect now that he may have suffered from dyslexia because he had difficulty
with reading assignments. Instead of the usual nun, we had a student teacher
whose job was to get us through a semester of Dicken's "Great
Expectations." We were assigned one chapter a night; I read the whole book
immediately to get it over with. "Miss Foolishly Naive" let us correct our
own daily quiz and give her the grade when she called our names. I'm sure many of my
classmates have not read "Great Expectations" to this day. They were clever
enough not to give themselves A's, but kept their cheating credible by telling her they
were getting average scores. Flint, who was honest, did the homework and managed to score
a C or D each time. Then, one day he flunked the quiz. I could tell that
he was embarrassed, especially since all the other kids had their usual medium grade. So,
impulsively, when my name was called, I dropped my usual 100 percent down to 80. He looked
at me, surprised. "It was a tough chapter," I remember saying, sympathetically.
He smiled in agreement. I felt great. Until the guilt hit me. I had lied. Never mind that
it didn't do a thing for my own advancement, I had told a non-truth. My father would be
disappointed if he knew. And, less importantly, I was probably going to hell when I died. I must pause in this narrative to tell you about my
father. Dad never lied. He also never fibbed, fudged, or misled. And he expected the same
absolute truthfulness from me. In fact, it was not a law or a rule with him, it was merely
a "great expectation." There were no exceptions, even "little white"
or "kindness." He wouldn't go out of his way to hurt someone's
feelings, but if you looked awful in that new dress, you'd better not ask his opinion. And
yet everyone loved him because, if he did say you looked good, you knew it was true. I
wanted to be just like him, to have my rare compliments valued, my word trusted, my honor
intact. But here I was with a lower-than-honest English grade
that I couldn't live with but had no intention of correcting with an admission to Miss
Naive. Fortunately, my early reading of the Dickens novel
was wearing off. The next few days, I honestly got less than perfect marks. I computed the
amount that had to be added each day to average the grade I should have received had I
given myself the 100 I deserved instead of an 80 that one time. At the end of the assignment, I was a truthful
"A student" again. And I had learned my lesson: nothing, not even a smile from
someone who looks like Flint McCullough, is worth the guilt of having told a lie. So it's time to tell the children that maybe almost
everyone does lie, at least once in a lifetime, but generally comes to regret it. The
truth is, everyone doesn't make a habit of lying, and neither should they. Barbara Anderson is executive
director of Citizens for Limited Taxation. She writes regularly for the Viewpoint page.
Her biweekly column also appears in other publications. |