From the caf?? owner whose \fresh-squeezed"" orange juice comes out of a can to the diplomat who assures the Kremlin that U.S. plans to nuke Russia are ""only a contingency,"" lying is everywhere these days. I am not just talking about polite, social lies like ""it's not crooked"" or ""you're a good friend."" I mean blatant, complete falsehoods that can go on for weeks, even years, at a time.
Some people think this is a bad thing. You know the type'the stern moralists who munch on celery and talk about things like the Ten Commandments while conveniently forgetting to mention that the Fourth Commandment is ""Thou shalt not eat celery.""
The concern most people have with lying is the difficulty involved. Actually, it's surprisingly easy to get away with lying. Most of the time people don't even bother to check to make sure that you are really telling the truth because it would be too hard or too much of a bother.
Take me for example. So far I have not had any calls from grad schools trying to find out if I really was the 2001 Rose Bowl MVP. And my parents'they still think I'm in military school. ""Top of the class at West Point, Mom and Dad! I'm going to be a general,"" I tell them every weekend.
There are, of course, disadvantages to lying. People can get pretty mad when they find out that you have been lying to them. And I don't blame them. I remember how pissed off I was when I found out that Sea Monkeys were not really monkeys. It is best to try to avoid this sort of unpleasantness, but even if you do get caught in a lie, you can usually tell a few more lies and get off scot-free. The trick here is to remain calm and confident, even as your carefully constructed web of lies collapses around you.
""You told me you were my father!""
""Errr?? No, I didn't.""
""Yes, you did!""
""Do I know you? Uhh... Are you Mike?""
""No.""
""Oh, uh sorry, I must have the wrong guy.""
Contrary to their destructive image, lies have given us many wonderful things, like the Latin language. You may have heard of some cockamamie story involving people called ""Romans"" who lived in a city called ""Rome"" in a place we now call ""Italy.""
But let's face it, all of these are just made up words. In fact, the entire Latin language was invented by a bunch of drunken linguists in about 1910. Apparently, they were all sitting around doing shots of absinthe and turpentine (because before Latin, linguists had a lot of time on their hands) when one of them passed out and began moaning something about declensions. The others thought it was funny. They began adding ""-ocus"" and ""-ulus"" onto the end of words, and from there, the whole thing snowballed.
And where would we be without Latin? Gangs of angry and unemployed linguists, taxonomists and classicists would roam the streets, harassing children and mugging old ladies. Copies of ""The Aeneid"" would be instantly readable, Quericulales opterinium var. Reticulum would instead be named ""that brown tree over there,"" and most of Europe would be speaking Basque. And nobody wants that, right? So lie, lie and lie some more. It's what keeps our society going.
