Subtlety and Lies

If you've ever read Harry Potter, you'll understand it when I say I'm good at "Legilimency". I can almost always tell when someone is lying to me but that's little to brag about considering how easily I delude myself into believing the things I want to hear.

I tend to cringe away from established religions; although I feel there is validity in a lot of the things they do and preach, I personally think it's all one intricate lie. But it works. People want a community, people want structure in their lives, and probably most of all, people want to believe that they do more than rot in the ground when they've died and that's there's a divine god or gods watching over them.

Even though I am deeply skeptical of religion in general, I have fallen prey to many other deceptions in my time. These are the cases in which I had successfully lied to myself to ensure the existence of pretty "truths" in my false reality. It's a little pathetic because I can tell the second a lie leaves someone's mouth, whether it grumbled or glided, but sometimes I just choose to believe. I'm very human this way. I think it's in human nature to want your world to fit neatly, never to be boring though because I'm pretty sure that everyone is some way or another likes challenge or adventure.

Me, I'm more prone to believe the little lies or white lies because I'd like to think that the sweater I'm wearing actually matches my skirt or that no one really did see me fall on my butt when of course the whole quad did. It's the bigger things, like religion or society, that you'll have a harder time of convincing me to convince myself of. This is a hard statement to make because I'm sure that I'm still currently under the impression that some lie my parents told me when I was young is true, however as a general rule I am less prone to fall for the more extreme or important lies.

I confess that I have lied on multiple occasions; the odd thing is that I am very rarely caught or busted for them. I do remember quite vividly possibly the largest lie I've ever told and all the consequences it caused. With something this dramatic and intense it's only fitting that I was in second grade when it all happened. For some reason I've labeled it "Strawberry" in my head when though it had absolutely nothing to do with strawberries whatsoever.

Well...I had this friend in the year below me who shared my name and she was seriously allergic to peanut butter, even the smell could set her off so she had to carry a needle with her always. And one day my science class did the classic experiment where you drop a padded egg from a height and hope it doesn't break but one kid in the class, his name was Gabe, used a can of peanut butter to protect his egg. I think it actually worked too but as soon as it was over the teacher scooped up the can and promptly threw it away. He told us briefly about my allergic friend and forbade us to mention to her the can full of peanut butter sitting in the trash can under the staircase on the concrete. And so of course the first thing I do as soon as I'm dismissed for recess is find her and explain all about the peanut butter can contaminating the place where she usually plays.

I clearly remember how her eyes had gotten very wide as she asked whether there was really that amount of peanut butter on the play structure. I'm pretty sure my eyes got a little wide too, I'd forgotten that she played on the play structure not the patio. But that completely took the fun out of my warning and I shamefully admit that I, without hesitation, nodded in earnest.

That split-second decision turned into a week of pure guilt as teachers and parents became involved in the situation and the entire play structure was scrubbed down in what was the many hours of a couple of high schooler's free time. I kept up the lie for that week, and at one point I even tried to convince myself that the crackers a third-grader had eaten on the structure at lunch had contained peanut butter in the middle, justifying the entire thing to be cleaned.

On the constant verge of tears, it was only after I actually threw up from my guilt and the stress my lie had created did I confess. I remember after much consideration, sprinting into my parent's bedroom after eight o'clock at night (which was wayyy past my bedtime back then), crawling under the covers and with my face hidden, and explaining what I had done. They had pulled back the covers and after saying that they had started to suspect my dishonesty though they hadn't been sure, they comforted me, praising my honesty about my dishonesty.

Even just thinking about that story causes me physical pain, I'd like to think that I learned a pretty hard lesson that week. It so happens that whenever I'm about to tell a lie now a days the word "Strawberry" floats into my head and something very much like the truth seems to spill from my mouth instead.