And that's the truth

When I was young and really stupid, there were some rules I just thought were nonsense, so I broke them. They were tiny, like my habit of running red lights if it was very late and there was no traffic in sight. I rationalized that traffic lights at that hour and under such conditions should be blinking, with stopping required only if there were pedestrians or other cars present. Any reasonable cop would have to agree with me if I should be caught. (I never was.) When I was very little and my parents made me go to bed earlier than the rest of the family, I would never go right to sleep. I'd lie awake until my parents came upstairs to bed. I knew they'd come in and check on me, so I'd close my eyes, lie very still and pretend to be sleeping. But I'd move something they couldn't see--a finger or toe or something--right at the moment when one of them stuck their head into the room. I was pleased to be able to fool them. Got one over! Proved it was dumb to make me go to bed so early. (Of course my parents never knew about these machinations, so the point was made only to myself, but that was its own reward.) I never harbored any guilt about these little ruses because they proved some point or other, demonstrated some tiny injustice.

Outright lying is something else again. I'm at a total loss when it comes to that because I'm not capable of dissimulation. Any time I've tried to lie, or to cover up something important, I've failed when the chips were down. Whatever I was trying to hide would invariably be overtaken by events beyond my control and I'd be forced to own up to something I should have admitted from the start. My most memorable such occasion was when I was in the 4th grade. My teacher, Mrs. Wilson, gave me special jobs because...oh heck, I was a goody-two-shoes teacher's pet. One day she gave me a check for $20 and asked me to go to the bank in the shopping center next to the school and cash it for her. Very cool! I got to lord it all over my classmates by doing something special for the teacher, and I got a walk outside to boot! I cashed the check and, instead of just carrying the money visibly in my hand (something the world told you never to do), I tucked it inside my coat. There was no pocket in there but the coat was tight and I knew the bill would rest securely.

Of course, when I got back to the classroom, the $20 bill was gone. It must have slipped out of my coat. In that moment, I came crashing down from my pedestal. I'll never forget the look on Mrs. Wilson's face when I told her I couldn't find the money, morphing from a kindly, expectant smile to horror, and finally utter disdain. (Twenty dollars was a lot of money at the time.) I was undone for the rest of the day, just sat limp at my desk, feeling my classmates' eyes all on me. In the cafeteria, even other teachers pointed at me and whispered to each other.

This episode was too shaming for me ever to tell anyone about it, least of all my parents. I resolved to shoulder the burden alone. I wrote a note to Mrs. Wilson apologizing for the loss and telling her I would pay her back in weekly installments from my allowance. I put the note in my pants pocket to sleep on it, and then forgot about it--until my mother found the note as she got clothes ready to wash. It was a Saturday afternoon. She called my father and they both confronted me and asked what happened; I had to spill out the whole sordid mess, in full expectation of being berated for my irresponsibility. Indeed when they heard the story my parents were furious....but not at me! They couldn't believe that Mrs. Wilson had entrusted a 9-year-old boy with such responsibility (I really had never had $20 in my hand before), and that she had the nerve to ask me to do such a thing in the first place. So instead of my groveling note, Mrs. Wilson received a blistering reprimand from my mother and father.

Mrs. Wilson never mentioned the incident again, but a while later she gave a lecture to the class about responsibility that included a claim that we were "not too young" for certain things. So she got the last word, but my life was liveable once again, and I'd had lesson number one, literally, in "life isn't always pretty." I was a bit more seasoned by the time I reached 10, a bit more careful. And I never tried to lie again about anything. The shame at being caught was much worse than simply admitting whatever it was at the start and accepting the consequences.

It was a good lesson but sometimes I think I took it too well. With me, what you see is what you get. I'm so implacably myself that I've never been a good actor. I'd find an acting class a worthwhile challenge just to be able to learn to pretend creatively, gaining some new insight from living for a while in someone else's skin. I'm envious of people who can pull such a thing off so effortlessly and movingly. But then, I can do things they probably wish they could do. Everything balances out and the world spins on....