Pants on Fire

One of my favorite movie lines is drolly delivered by the perennially under appreciated Jeff Goldblum in The Big Chill:

“I don't know anyone who could get through the day without two or three juicy rationalizations. They're more important than sex.”

Of course, “rationalization” is just a self-forgiving euphemism for the far more damnable “lie.”

Why do we lie anyway? After all, we were warned at a very early age that our pants would spontaneously combust or our noses grow to Pinocchio-sized proportions if we did. If that didn’t scare us to straight talk, how about turning into an LSD-crazed arachnid and weaving the proverbial tangled web.

Fact is, we’re all hard-wired dissemblers who are literally fed a falsehood in the womb. The placenta is provided by the paternal side of the partnership so, in order to perform its function without being destroyed as a biological invader, it cloaks itself in maternal chemicals. There’s even an area in our brain that governs prevarication. It starts to develop around the age of three or four (“Timmy, who broke the vase?” “The dog did!”), growing by leaps and bounds thereafter (“Tim, who drove the getaway car?” “Dougie did!”).

It’s interesting to note that women are believed to be the first fibbers, simply because they were the first talkers, and that it’s impossible to be a successful politician without telling a few whoppers. What this says about female politicians, I’ll leave to you.

Even the Almighty wasn’t foolish enough to forbid shaggy dog stories. The commandment reads, “Ye shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor,” not “Ye shall cut the crap.” The Good Lord knew that rampant honesty would be fatal to society. How many marriages do you think would still be standing if every husband answered the question, “Does my butt look fat in these pants?” and every wife answered the question, “Were you just faking it?” with the gospel truth?

Spouses, parents, children, friends, employers, the electorate and every sucker who’s born every minute aside, our biggest untruths are practiced on ourselves, as the above-referenced bit of dialogue attests. From evading those few pounds we put on over the holidays by blaming the clothes dryer to denying the cheating ways of a loved one when the sext message is staring us straight in the face, we are the Sovereigns of Self-Deception.

Hell, we don’t even like to call a lie “a lie” because of its shameful implications. Think I’m pulling your leg? Re-read this article and count how many times I did just that.