Pants On Fire
Your daughter plays Frere Jacques in E Minor on the flute. The tune dwindles to its natural death. She looks you in the eye and says, “Did you like that?”
Instead of no, you say “I love how you did that first bit.” This is Lying by Evasion.
Your boss wants to know if you’ve finished the Carmichael Report – which you’ve never even heard about. Instead of looking the nong you say, “I’m all over it.” Lying by Deceit.
“Is there something I need to know?” asks your friend, whose husband you know is sleeping with the landscaper (male).
The best you can manage is Lying by Omission: “Have you seen Brokeback Mountain yet?”
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And that’s just a grab from the latest Feature posted on your right, namely Pants On Fire - the science, psychology and pyromania of fibbing.
Did you know, for example, that lying fall into four categories?
The first stems from empathy (“Your bum looks fine in that”).
The second, the self-enhancement lie (“Yeah, yeah, I’m fluent in Quark”)
Number 3 is the selfish variety, often said at the expense of another party (“I’d never get drunk like that damn vamp over there!”)
And last, the downright anti-social lie, like the type Koko the gorilla ’says’ in the fib feature. Check it out. Hope you enjoy it.
Who knows, reading the story may urge you to come clean about the fattest fib you ever told, right here in the privacy of an off-Broadway blog.