“That’s how I know she’s LYING!”
We all have our tells. As we get older, they get more complicated just like our own relationship to dishonesty
By Juyun
“Mama, I know T’s lying,” F meets my unconcerned gaze in the rearview mirror.
“Ah-ha, why’s that?”
“Because she’s smiling!” F screams.
Her calm facade falls, revealing she is in fact, still 5.
“T, did you hit your sister?”
“No, hahaha no!”
“See?!” F screams. “She’s lying!”
“Ok, ok - T, do not hit your sister and do not lie.”
Good job, Mom.
Later that evening, I find myself scampering across the family room searching high, and low, so low, on the crumb-riddled ground under the couch, for the remote.
“Where is it girls?” I ask.
“I don’t know!” F laughs.
Immediately I stand up. I dust the crumbs off in a dignified mom-sort of way, and put my hands on my hips so she knows I mean business.
“F, I can tell you’re lying,” I say.
“Ok!” she laughs again. “Ok, it’s here,” F produces the plastic appliance from a couch crevice.
“How did you know I was lying?! I was just kidding!” she laughs.
“Because when you lie, you laugh, too. Like T. And! You hide your face.”
Perhaps that’s the difference between 4 and 5, the awareness that lying in theory is bad and so you hide your face to cover your tell.
When I say something untrue, my eyes meet the ground. When I lie, my heart speeds up and my mouth gets dry and I’m so sure my voice will crack as it grazes the lie, I try to get it out as quickly as possible.
It seems the older we get the more complicated our relationship to dishonesty becomes.
It’s no longer a laughing matter.
It’s, do I say the nice thing? Or the honest one? Do I risk friendship in service of preserving my own integrity? Do I inflict pain now (and be blamed for being cruel) in hopes that it will save someone from pain later, even if I certainly won’t be the one who gets the credit for the rescue?
Sometimes you see something coming down the pike so fast all you want to do is pull your friend, your kid, your sibling, from impact. And they won’t let you.
So then you sit on the tracks with them until the moment of impact, saying the nice thing. The dishonest thing they cloak themselves in.
“Ugh! I just can’t lie!” my sister said, days later. “I just can’t! Should I just not say anything if I see something bad?”
I shrug. “Probably.”
It’s a lesson I’ve had to learn the hard way.