April 19: The Pen Is Royal Blue!

"Hey, Brandon. How was your day?"

"Hi, Mom. It was okay. Nothing too exciting."

"Hey, why is the front door unlocked?"

"Oh, um. I uh. There was a cat and I opened the door to scare it off and um, I must have forgotten to lock the door."

"A cat?"

"Okay, Carly was here! I'm sorry I lied! I don't know why I did it. I'm sorry!"

When it comes to lying, I am the absolute worst! I can't do it. Lying is never even an option for me. When someone asks me a question, I give the honest answer every time. My brain just doesn't work fast enough to be able to come up with a creative fabrication on the spot.

Recently I was, for lack of a better word, forced to lie. I don't know who reads these so I'll make this as vague and ambiguous as I possibly can without losing any of the story. I knew I was going to have to lie, so I tried to put my words together so it wouldn't technically be a lie. I thought by doing this, it would make it easier for me to achieve my goal, but it didn't.

My hands immediately became cold and clammy. My knees literally started shaking. The tone of my voice became slightly higher and the volume was just a bit louder. I stuttered and quickly looked into the listener's right eye before breaking eye contact all together and looking toward the ground. My stomach turned over and my heart rate increased. I don't know what the listener was thinking. I don't know if he/she believed me, but I definitely felt vulnerable and extremely guilty. And I wasn't even technically lying!

I've gotten in trouble with tables that I've waited on because I told them the truth about how their food was prepared. I've had guests ask me my opinion on certain menu items and I flat out told them how disgusting I thought the item was. Peers ask me personal and private questions and because I don't have the ability to make something up, I go with the truth; and then I'm made fun of it.

I'll never be able to cheat on a girl or steal from work. If I murder someone, I better hope I'm never a suspect. Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment is a perfect example of the type of paranoia that I would experience if I ever did commit a crime.

Whenever people find this out about me, they're always telling me to just lie like it's something easy that everybody does. For whatever reason, though, I can't do it. If I know what I'm saying isn't the truth, I'm convinced everyone else knows it too. I simply cannot lie.