Week 25: If I'm Being Honest

As is probably obvious at this point, I don't feel much like writing lately. And yet, here I am.

This is week 25, and I'm 3/7 of the way through being completely truthful. There's really not much to report, though. This might be because I haven't really told anyone who can really take advantage of it that this is the plan for the week. Peter knows, but for some reason hasn't put it to the test yet. Maybe he just doesn't want to know. AJ doesn't know, but when he does I promise you the first question out of his mouth will be, "Do you love me or Hannah the most?"

I did have jury duty yesterday, but since I was not interviewed at all, I had no occasion to tell my interviewer that I was anally probed by aliens, or spent three years "tapdancing" on the Atlantic City strip for money, or tearfully confessing my seamy career as a movie bootlegger. I did call the police to report a burglary I witnessed in the afternoon, but as tempted as I was I did not give them descriptions of the burglars that match Peter and AJ.

This isn't to say that I spend my life blithely prevaricating from one situation to the next. I don't. I think on the whole I'm a honest person. If a clerk gives me too much money in change from a transaction, I give it back. I've accidentally stolen things and then gone back to pay for them. But I've also not gone back to pay for them when it causes me too much trouble, even when the "trouble" is "walk across half a parking lot in light rain." And, if I get eight days of sick leave from my employer, I can pretty much guarantee that I will be "sick" eight days that calendar year; it's just that days seven and eight might simply be "sick of going to work".  So, I am prone to the lie, or implied lie, of convenience. But my kids are watching -- one who, at four, is just learning about what a lie is and what it can do, and one of whom is a teenager that is positively delighted to pounce on any hint of untruthfulness or hypocrisy on his parents' part. As a parent, I am loath to give my child that sort of happiness or enjoyment.

I have more to say, but if I don't post this now I never will, and I have to leave my desk. Don't feel like writing much...and yet. Once I go, I can't stop.