Lies: When the shoe is on the other foot

One of my children is at that stage of childhood where kids believe that their mothers have eyes at the back of their heads. My daughter believes that I have super powers because I seem to know the mischief she is up to even when I am not in the room in which the mischief is taking place.

She is yet to understand that I know the impossible because I was once a child and did the same things she does when no one is looking when I was her age.

Sometime ago, a colleague, frustrated that the writer she had assigned her main feature was yet to submit it yet the deadline was in the next hour, commented, “She (the writer) doesn’t realise that I know she is lying, I mean, I was a writer too and have been there and done that.”

RIDICULOUS LIES
The writer had told her that she had accidentally deleted her feature and therefore had to rewrite it.

We ended up having a good laugh as we recalled the ridiculous lies we told our editors when our core role was to write — once, unable to meet a deadline and knowing that I would get a tongue lashing from my upset boss, I camped in a coffee shop near the office with my laptop the whole morning and resolutely ignored her two calls as I fervently typed away.

When I completed the feature, I walked to the office, cheerily saying hi to my boss as I headed to my desk.

“Where is your feature?” she demanded, ignoring my greeting.

“Which feature?” I asked, innocence written all over my face.

“What do you mean ‘which feature’ … the one you’re writing this week,” she said.

ASSIGNMENT

“But I sent it first thing in the morning before going for an assignment!” I exclaimed, sounding very surprised that she didn’t get it.

“Well, I don’t have it,” she informed me, looking at me suspiciously. I then busied myself switching on my desktop computer and then declared after a couple of minutes that ‘what do you know, the feature was in the ‘outbox’.

“It seems my inbox was full, that’s why you didn’t get it …” I explained.

I know, such lies should be a criminal offence, but in my defence, I don’t know of an employee who has never told the ‘dog ate my homework’ lies, especially if theirs is a high-pressure job.

Having told my share of lies in the course of my career, however, means that I always know it whenever I am being lied to, but since I don’t have evidence, I simply grin and bear with it even though I feel grossly cheated.

CHICKEN STEW

But job-related lies are not the only ones that we tell. How many times have you heard your seatmate in a matatu confidently telling the person on the other end that he is in Naivasha yet the matatu is stuck in a jam somewhere on Jogoo Road?

Or that man on phone in a restaurant telling someone on phone how broke he is yet before him is a plate of steaming chicken stew?

Thinking about it, we started lying more with the advent of cell phones. Before the mobile phone age, we lied a lot less, since you had to be in the same room with someone to tell fibs. With the mobile phone, however, those that you owe money can reach you even in the toilet.

The writer is the Editor, ‘Society’ and Magazines,‘Daily Nation’; [email protected]