Mostly honest is better than totally lying

I’ve never been a good liar. In my youth, I tried dishonesty like other teens tried drinking, but my conscience is too tenacious. I have vivid memories of all the lies I’ve ever told because they hang like a sinful weight on my soul; therefore, fear of potential guilt curbs my desire to weave inaccurate tales.

I also don’t like to be untruthful for other reasons. One is that I’d have to remember all the details surrounding my story and another is that my body physically reacts to lying in an undesirable way that involves cold sweats, a flushed face, and the words “I’m a liar” appearing in bright neon across my forehead.

Though I’m not cut out for deceit, there are types of fibbing that don’t bother me at all. For instance, when I waited tables, I’d regularly spout lies to customers concerning the superior flavor of certain menu items. One place I worked was Chili’s which has served their “Awesome Blossom” (a deep-fried onion) for years and almost everyone who tried it loved it. I don’t care for onions nor do I care for dipping sauces that could possibly contain a mayonnaise base. This covers a wide spectrum of non-mayo products including ranch dressing, guacamole, and “Awesome Blossom” dipping sauce.

The only thing worse than misrepresenting my own personal tastes is hearing a server say, “Gosh, I’ve never tried that dish, but to my knowledge no one has been hospitalized after eating it so I guess it’s okay.”

Since I strive to be as honest as a person with customer service employment history can be, it surprises me how easy it is to lie to my own children.

I have inadvertently lied to them, like the time I took my daughter in for shots and told my 5 year old son that he didn’t need any. When the nurse scanned his chart, it was brought to my attention that he required four shots!

He was innocently sitting in the waiting area because he didn’t want to hear his baby sister cry when she got stuck with the needle. I called him into the room and said, “I’ve got some good news and some bad news.” He requested to hear the bad news first and I regretfully told him the shot situation. He immediately began tearing up and asked in a shaky voice for the good news.

The problem was that I didn’t have any positive developments to report. I guess I should’ve used a different lead-in; instead, I said, “I’m sorry, son. There really isn’t any good news.”

To this day, I don’t think he has ever forgiven me for those surprise vaccinations.

I have purposely lied when it comes to my kids and food which is par for the course with my restaurant background. For some reason, they never put up much fuss if dinner included chicken so I just started calling meats “beef chicken” and “pork chicken.” We had salmon one night and I told my son it was “river chicken.” Needless to say, that description didn’t help him appreciate salmon at all.

Being mostly honest isn’t always easy. If people ask for my opinion, I try to deliver it without hurting feelings, but that isn’t always possible.  You’ll know that I’m struggling with an answer when I start to look at the sky, attempt to change the subject, or suddenly have bad stomach cramping and have to run to the bathroom.

In order to be my friend, you must understand: if you don’t want to hear it, then don’t make me say it. If you can live with that then we’re sure to get along just fine.

Fashion disaster on public display

“Mom, you aren’t going out dressed like that, are you?”

This was uttered by my son after I snatched the car keys off the kitchen table to drive him to school. He was obviously concerned someone would see me. When I looked down at myself, I saw sleep shorts that had fit much better six months ago and a dumpy tank top that wasn’t supporting anything. I didn’t need a mirror to tell me that my hair was doing something unnatural and disturbing.

“It’s not like I’m getting out of the car! I’ll just drop you off and drive away; no harm, no foul.”

My feeling was that, worst case scenario, one of the safety patrol kids would help my boy with the passenger door and catch a glimpse of such horror they’d have to go wash their eyes out with industrial strength hand soap.

When we got in the car and headed up the street, I saw the glowing, orange idiot light in the shape of a gas station pump: a helpful invention telling oblivious people to fill up soon if they don’t want to get stranded on the side of the highway while they wait for their aggravated husband to come rescue them. The light had come on the previous day and I tried to calculate how much further I could drive before I pushed fate too far.

My mind flashed back to 1990 when my brother, Adam, and I drove to Atlanta for a concert. Adam’s car didn’t have that particular warning light and, in my frantic dash to make up for lost time, I had neglected to catch sight of the indicator needle slipping beneath “E.”

Running out of gas was bad enough, but doing it in front of your younger brother in his car was maddeningly embarrassing.

After leaving my son at school, I decided to drive to the closest gas station and take care of my vehicle’s dehydration status. A truck was getting gassed up so I pulled into a slot where the pump would hide most of my disheveled self. I thanked my good fortune when I slipped on a jacket I’d found in the car then quickly filled ten bucks in the tank before speeding off to the privacy of my home.

You’d think I would have learned a valuable lesson from all this, but (like my friend, Amy) I’m pretty stubborn when it comes to learning lessons.

Last week, my sister agreed to watch my kids while my husband and I went to his 20 year high school reunion “meet-and-greet” at Cowpoke’s Watering Hole. Since I like to take showers in peace (without hearing my kids scream at each other in the background), I figured I’d drive them to Meredith’s house first. Her one stipulation was to pick up pizza.

I threw on some old gym clothes and decided my son was plenty old enough to walk into Little Caesar’s by himself and pay for a couple of their “Hot-N-Ready” pizzas.

Friday at 5:30 in the evening is apparently a popular time to get pizza because he waited for almost 30 minutes before he took possession of them. He walked to the door, and, due to his inexperience in dealing with awkward, flat boxes, tried to open the door with one hand while holding the precious pizzas in the other. The pepperoni didn’t make the transition and ended up face-down on the dirty sidewalk. Lucky for us, the good people of Little Caesar’s handed him a fresh pizza with no questions asked.

Maybe, from now on, I might not leave the house if I’m not presentable to the public, but I wouldn’t put my money on it.