The Liar's List

Truth is, indeed, stranger than fiction.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that my lie count was pretty low yesterday. As I tally up all the little white lies, whoppers and truth stretching I commit over the course of one week, I am sure the list will expand and grow into something truly horrifying.

But yesterday was a good day in the truth department. Here are the lies I told, the person to whom I was lying, and the reason why I lied.

1. A co-worker walks up to my desk. "Do you want to come learn how to use the new copier? The guy is going to give a demonstration," she says.

I respond, "Absolutely!" in my brightest, most cheerful voice. Then I spent the next 20 minutes staring blankly at the shiny new copier, humming Bonnie Raitt's "Louise" under my breath. I mean, who wants to stand there while some guy from the copier company tells you that the feeder tray holds up to 800 sheet of 8 1/2 x 11 paper?

 2. My boss, who is a painfully slow typist, called me in to his office so he could "dictate" an e-mail to me. I punched the appropriate computer keys while letting my mind wander. What was I going to make for dinner? Did I run the dishwasher this morning before I left? When is the city going to come haul away the dead tree that fell outside our office during that bad storm we had last week? At the end of the e-mail, my boss turned to me and asked, "How does that sound."

I replied, "It sounds great!" The reason? I really didn't want to have to spend half an hour rewriting an e-mail.

3. A co-worker is pregnant, and her due date is just around the corner. This is her first baby, so she is always looking to me for guidance and advice. We were talking about "packing the hospital bag" during lunch yesterday, and the conversation turned, as it inevitably does, to labor. My co-worker is genuinely freaked out about all of this, and I wanted to set her mind at ease, at least until that first contraction hits.

I say, "Really, you'll be fine. It's not that bad."

However, as anyone who has ever pushed a child out of their nether-regions knows, it's the most unbelievable, unbearable, "God must be a man" kind of pain out there. I figure, she'll know soon enough...

And that was it. No more lies yesterday. One was said to show that I'm a good sport (which I'm really not), one was said to spare myself professional agony, and one was said to spare the feelings of a friend. Not bad for a day's work!