Pants on fire

“How do you like the casserole?” my mother asked.

My fork stopped about halfway to my mouth. On it was a pile of said casserole, bits of pasta with burnt edges held together by some kind of paste I can only assume was Elmer’s glue. Wafting from this cluster of food-like material was an odor you typically associate with county fairs, the ones with big belching heifers and dirty chickens.

I had two options. I could tell her the truth, which would hurt her feelings and cause awkwardness around the dinner table. Or I could flat-out lie and tell her the casserole was spectacular.

“It’s really good,” I said, and left it at that.

This minor exchange took place nearly 20 years ago, but I’ve never forgotten it because I still haven’t lived down the guilt of having lied to my mother. I’m hardly the first person to have done this; people lie to their mothers all the time, and usually about bigger stuff, like why they stayed out with their friends until one in the morning, or why their breath smells like a Coors truck that crashed into a pot dispensary. At least it was a white lie, meant to salvage her feelings. That takes the edge off a bit, although it stuck me with that casserole for months.

Lying is a part of being human. We’ve all told white ones, and most of us have told some not-so-white ones. Usually we get the more malicious lies out of our system when we’re children, still experimenting with various personality styles. I still remember a sixth-grade classmate, “Miles,” inventing a story about a gang of older kids who supposedly ambushed me while trick-or-treating one Halloween, threatening to steal my bags of candy. According to this fictional tale, I was so overcome by fright that I burst into tears and fled, cutting across neighbors’ lawns and mewling like an injured kitten. This was obviously a lie meant to embarrass me, but I got the last laugh. I weighed nearly twice as much as Miles, and spent most of the next day’s morning recess eating a chicken sandwich while sitting on his head.

Pathological liars are the worst, because their lies are obvious and come at you so rapidly it can actually be fatiguing. They rarely have any purpose to them. My parents own a duplex, and when I was a kid there was always a revolving door of families moving in or out of the second-floor apartment; the Johnsons would arrive, stay for a year, and then once the bedrooms were sufficiently stinky and the walls scribbled up in children’s handwriting, they’d leave and make room for the Smiths, who’d stink up the works even more. It was an interesting way to grow up.

When the “Humperdinks” moved in I was encouraged to make friends with their son, “Chet,” who was about my age. I tried. But Chet was a pathological liar. We were in the backyard swimming pool one summer afternoon, and I made the classic mistake of telling him something about myself. I mentioned that I liked the novels of Stephen King.

“I wrote a book once and sent it to him,” said Chet.

I waited a beat, anticipating that there might be some forthcoming punchline, maybe a “Just kidding” or a “Gotcha.” Nothing. Chet didn’t even recognize the silence as being uncomfortable. He just smiled and waited for me to respond.

“You wrote a book? And sent it … to who? To Stephen King?”

“Yup! And he wrote back and told me it was awesome! He said it was the perfect book!”

I hated this kid.

Even at the tender age of 12 I considered myself something of a writer, but even if I hadn’t been, even if I’d been a budding street juggler or rodeo clown, it would have been easy to sniff out this particular lie. It was just too preposterous, and for so many reasons that I actually have to arrange them in a numbered list: 1) You don’t write novels at the age of 12. 2) If you do, you have to be some kind of savant. Chet Humperdink was no savant. His main interests in life were Sonic the Hedgehog and coffee cakes. 3) You send novels to publishers, not to Stephen King. 4) If you do, he’ll do the sensible thing and throw it out. He doesn’t have time to provide feedback on people’s passion projects. 5) In a bizarro world where he did read people’s manuscripts, he wouldn’t call any book “perfect.” There’s no such thing. And 6), if you can write novels at the age of 12, you’re probably not living in a duplex in Lewiston and flunking sixth-grade English. Probably. I’m going with the odds on this one.

Summoning up the most skeptical tone in my repertoire, I asked, “So what’s your book about?”

“Are you calling me a liar?”

Yes, Chet. Yes I am.

In a way I was fortunate to have encountered a person like Chet early in my life. Nothing beats the liar out of you like seeing someone do it badly. Nobody’s ever 100 percent honest -- you can’t survive life without a modicum of tact, and small lies are often a form of this -- but you can be as honest as you can within the bounds of reason. By all means, compliment someone’s clothing even if it’s ridiculous. Please, praise your art-challenged child on her awful drawing of a monkey flying a spaceship. But when you start spinning outrageous yarns about playground ruffians and best-selling authors, you’ve crossed an ethical line in odious, cringe-inducing fashion.

Oh, and Mom, if you’re reading this, I didn’t mean what I said about the casserole. That was a total lie. I swear.