About Lying

Here is a post that I wrote about lying for my rambling blog on
February 11, 2012. (The drawing was not with the original post.)

One of the gallery owners who consigned my art said to me recently, "I never lie." I suspected he might be lying so I said, "Never?" "Nope! Never! I'm Catholic and Catholics don't lie," he responded. His comment took me aback, way aback. So far aback, in fact, it was 1951. I was suddenly six-years-old and sitting in a Sunday school classroom at the First Church of the Nazarene in downtown Indianapolis. As our teacher recited the Ten Commandments, I attempted to put each one into a context that I, as a small child, could understand.

Thou shall not murder.

I really like that rule.

Thou shall not steal.

That's a good rule, too, but...

Don't covet thy neighbor's ox or ass,

and don't even think about his wife.

No problem.

Don't say a cuss word and

then hyphenate God's name to it.

Does my uncle know that rule?

Don't do the nasty-nasty with an adult tree.

Does the minister know that rule?

Do not worship anything but Him.

Not even popsicles? The red ones?

Save Sundays for going to church.
What about Wednesday nights?
Can we drop that one?

There is only one God.
Does our doctor know that?

Honor your parents.
Now that's gonna be hard.

Still standing at inattention while the gallery owner, who never lies, was lying to me, my imagination was still back in Sunday school. "What about lying?" I asked my teacher as I secretly slipped a piece of Juicy Fruit gum out of the girl's purse next to me. "Oh, lying is okay. Only Catholics are not permitted to lie," she said with a straight face.

LIAR, LIAR, PANTS ON FY-EER

Everyone lies. It's all part of being human. If you are a member of the Homo sapiens genus, you lie. Oh, don't sit there all smug and highfalutin. "Well, I don't lie," you say. That's a lie and you know it. And if there's one thing I hate, it's a lying liar.

Ever since the gallery owner said he never lied, I found it hard to trust him. I drove by his house late at night, but his car was always there. He answered the phone whenever I called. He was always where he said he was going to be. And he never called me by another woman's name, but it was too late; the trust was gone. How could I believe anything he said in the future? We were over. I had to move on.

I'm with a new gallery owner now, and I'm close to popping the question: Do you lie? I feel confident he'll be honest about his lying, and, if so, we'll do just fine. I just hope he doesn't notice that every time I come into the gallery, one of his pens goes missing.

What? Don't give me that look. It's not me. I never steal.