Lying is very important
in this age of information. Not to mention useful. Important how,
you ask? Well, I'll tell you how. It's not. Yes, that's right,
it's not important at all. I just lied, you see.
However, lying is very useful.
Take this article for example. By telling you that lying is
important in today's society I ensured your attention and got you
to keep reading.
Is your love life suffering
because of your mediocre life-style? No sweat! They need never
know. All you need to do is 'embellish' a little and they'll be
flocking to you.
And what about your career?
Going nowhere? A little 'embellishment' on the old resume could
fix that up, too.
Whether it be your love life,
career or social life that needs improving, lying can do it for
you. That's why we at Fibbers International have composed these
three easy-to-learn guidelines to help you improve your dishonesty
and your life.
Step One: Start off
small
If you're just starting out in
the great game of lies, fibs and whoppers, remember &emdash; you
don't have to go around telling people you're the Imperial Emperor
of a Pacific Archipelago right away. We'll get to that
later.
If you're not a very
experienced liar, it's best to start practising on smaller things.
For instance, if someone asks what your mother's name is, tell
them it's Joyce instead of Carol. Work you way up as you gain
experience and confidence. Gradually you will start lying about
bigger things and soon you will be lying about everything &emdash;
your job, your family, your car, your pets, your friends, your
income, your home, all without embarrassment or shame.
Step Two: Rehearse your lies
beforehand
The worst thing you can
possibly do whilst in the middle of a lie is to forget what you've
said and start contradicting yourself.
Johnny (wet, bedraggled and 25
minutes late home from school):
Honest, mum! It's true! Six of
'em, there were! Big, black dobermans with huge pointy teeth! I
had to run through the creek and hide out at Gibbo's place 'til
they'd gone!
Enter Father: Geez, son, what
happened to you?
Mother: He was chased through
town by a pack of feral dogs, poor boy.
Father: What kind of
dogs?
Johnny: German
shepherds.
Mother: I thought you said they
were dobermans.
Johnny: Oh, um ... did I? Come
to think of it, they might have been German shepherd/doberman
crosses ....
Yeah, right.
It may pay off to rehearse your
lie a little bit, maybe even write it down, especially if you're
planning to tell it to lots of people.
However, no matter how much you
practise, make sure it doesn't sound rehearsed. It won't do to be
lying to someone, sounding as if you're reading off cue cards.
Also, don't get too detailed. The less you have to remember, the
better. If people start to bug you for the nitty-gritties, tell
them you're not sure, you don't know, you weren't really paying
that much attention, or that it all happened so fast, and ...
anyway, you get the idea.
Step Three: Never look the
person you're lying to directly in the eye
So, you're trying to explain to
your girl/boyfriend why you can't make it to their parents' place
this Saturday. Everything's going along smoothly, but just as it
looks like that special someone is about to nod understandingly
and say, 'It's all right, it's not that important anyway', they
pull a fast one and say 'I want you to look me directly in the eye
and tell me you can't come to my parents' place this Saturday
because you suffer a rare and incurable disease which causes you
to have wild fits of flatulence for 72 hours every six
months.'
Now you know what you should
do. You should say, 'Honey, why would I lie to you? You know how
much I love your parents. It just kills me to know that I won't be
able to make it this weekend &emdash; especially since they are
only in town for three days before they go back to Perth. Believe
me &emdash; if I could have it any other way I would.' But you
don't, do you?
Nope.
The minute you look into those
big, baby-blue eyes all your resolve melts away, leaving you a
blubbing mass of pathetic apologies.
Shame on you!
You spend the next three days
trying to convince your partner that you'll never lie to him/her
again, so long as you live - grovelling, pleading, begging. 'Oh
well,' you think to yourself, 'at least now they're too mad with
me to want me at their parents' place. You'd think so, wouldn't
you? Yet it seems on that account, you're still very
welcome.
All this pain and suffering
because you couldn't even pull off one deep and soulful look in
the eye while lying your guts out.
Okay, I see I'm going to have
to let you in on a little secret. If the person you are lying to
asks you to look them directly in the eye, stare straight at the
bridge of their nose. I tell you, the poor sods can't tell the
difference.
Everything will work out for
the best. They will feel secure in their belief in your honesty
and you will be spared any of those nasty guilt pangs.
Perfect.
THURSDAY
I'm floating. It's warm and
dark, and I am content. In the distance, I hear a movement. The
sound draws closer, the darkness thins. I feel a presence near me.
There is a pressure on my shoulder.
I open my eyes with a start. A
shadow looms over me. 'Time to get up', it says.
I muster all my sleepy will to
lift my head a few centimetres above my pillow and peer stupidly
at the clock, high on its shelf. 'It's only 7.25', I tell my
mother gruffly, falling back onto my pillow exhausted. 'I've still
got five minutes. Come back then.'
My mother leaves my room,
indifferent to my lack of morning cheer, but she does not return.
She doesn't need to. She knows I'm well and truly awake
now.
The morning air is a hazy
blue-grey. I eye it suspiciously from beneath numerous doonas. It
looks cold.
I attempt to draw a determined
breath but to my annoyance, it turns into a yawn. I throw the
covers back bravely nevertheless and immediately
shiver.
Yep, it's cold out
there.
Oh well. Time to begin the
morning routine. Pee break; eat fruity bix; take shower; check
timetable and shove all relevant books into school bag; run
downstairs and drop food for recess on top of them; collect money
for buses and lunch; farewell dogs and cats and mother, just in
time to hear the familiar groan of the bus as it slows to round
the corner.
I arrive at school (a
collection of long, squat, flat-roofed, brown-brick buildings) in
time to hear the principal announce that a brief
full&endash;school assembly will take place before form meetings,
and will commence within the next two minutes. I pick up my pace a
bit.
The corridor of my
year&endash;level's locker wing is crammed with loud, smartly
dressed, unruly herd stock. They jostle and shout and I shove my
way through them. I shout back in reply to greetings as I wrestle
with the door of my locker. Fate, in her wisdom, has bestowed all
the bottom lockers to the tall people, and all the top ones to the
shorties.
With people towering over me,
minimal light pouring through the windows from the overcast sky
and the corridor lights switched off at the regular time for
economy's sake, I can't see a thing. Where on earth is my exercise
book?!
Like a detonation countdown,
the principal reminds us of the approaching assembly, while the
year&endash;level coordinator makes her way down the corridor with
her little yellow envelope. Second earrings, necklaces and rings
not conforming to school regulations are hastily removed and
hidden. Many a tale has been told of those nose&endash;rings that
entered those small, yellow envelopes, not to emerge again for a
whole semester.
I am late to the assembly. But
I think I deserve points for effort.
After recognising the
achievements of the school chess team, we are sent off to
form&endash;meetings for roll call and for a reading of the Daily
Bulletin, which reminds all cast members of the school musical
that there is a rehearsal at lunchtime.
The bell, which sounds more
like an air-raid alarm, signals for our form to split up and
dispatch to our various classes. Mine is a double period of one of
my numerous mathematics classes, catchily entitled 'Graphing and
modelling using technology', where, at the moment, we are studying
bivariate data. While it is not exactly boring, the highlight of
the first 90 minutes of my school day is the adrenalin rush I get
from almost getting my finger caught in a ringbinder while trying
to extract a sheet of graph paper.
Finally, it is recess and when
at last my friends and I are shooed away from our comfortable
loitering spot in the corridor and into the great outdoors by a
distracted-looking home economics teacher, we are greeted with the
familiar overcast sky and chill wind, bringing with it the stench
of the nearby cattle sale yards. Our school is in a peculiar
location. Surrounded by the sale yards, the tip and various
industrial factories (including a Nestle's production factory),
you can rest assured that for a majority of the time the aroma
will be ... interesting.
We trek across the basketball
cum assembly area to the portable room beside the chaplain's
office that she allows us to use. It's smelly and a little dank,
but at least it's warm. It's also so packed full of Year Ten
bodies (as usual) that there might as well be a sign on the door
saying 'Year 10 Common Room'.
Triple J blares over the radio,
playing some song, the lyrics of which are undoubtedly vulgar but
so badly articulated that nobody understands them anyway. The
males of the group are playing that stupid game where they hurl
bits of chalk or red glucose frogs at their opponents, who dodge
the barrage by rolling over and behind furniture and
people.
After recess is a double period
of English, where we study the differences between formal and
colloquial language, giggle a lot, have elbow fights, are
threatened to be separated, and finally calm down.
At lunch, I go straight from
English to the canteen to avoid the rush, and then on to the music
room via my locker, to drop off my books and pick up my 'Joseph
and His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat' vocal score. Fact: Trying
simultaneously to gulp down a Big M and trill your tongue in a
vocal warm up is by no means simple.
Next is Oral Japanese where,
firstly, we learn a new Japanese tongue-twister, before working on
our oral presentations, looking up rude words in the
English/Japanese dictionaries and shouting them across the room in
the hope of getting a reaction from the Sensei.
Last period of the day is PE
Theory, where we copy down essential parts of our teacher's
dictated notes on canoeing technique. Our teacher is short, with a
healthy solid build and cropped, dark-grey hair. But her most
distinctive feature is her reading style. She sounds like one of
those race-track commentators:
'WhenbeingboardedthecanoeshouldbeperpendiculartothebankPersonAshouldholdthecanoesteadywhilePersonBstepsintoitandmovestothebackofthecanoebeingwellbalancedandcrouchinglowwhileholdingontotherimofthecraftmorestuffaboutcanoeingandthelikeuntilshefinallyslowsdownat
the end of the paragraph.'
And at last the day's final
announcements, wedged between two sets of xylophone tones, are
made, and chairs are put up, and bits of paper put in the bin, and
the air-raid signal sounds, and people scramble to get to their
lockers so they don't miss out on a seat on their
buses.
Thank goodness tomorrow is
Friday.
