Sometimes I’m amazed at the number of lies we tell throughout our daily lives. I’m talking about big lies (“I really need this class to be a P/NP class because I have Chlamydia and that really impedes my ability to study about nutrition“), white lies (“I’m sure the only reason why he’s not calling is because he’s so busy thinking about calling!”) and even small lies you tell yourself while crying at night (“I will find someone who loves me, I will. I’m not going to die alone, not like last time“).
These days, our words hold little to no value and lying has become second nature. Take for instance when someone is talking about a news item they heard the other day and you, without even thinking, reply, “Oh yeah I heard about that, but remind me again?” when in fact you have no idea what he’s talking about. You only said you knew because you don’t want to look like some out-of-touch idiot who doesn’t know what’s going on in the world. So if you want to lie more, here are some more opportunities.
I know everybody says don’t do it, but stretching the truth on your resume is very common. The way I see it, people are probably lying about how great the job is too.
Every internship/job I’ve interviewed for always talks about how great their program is: How competitive it is, how you’ll experience so much, how it uses cutting-edge technology, how they’re ahead of everybody, how you’re not going to do bitch work, how impressive it’ll look in the future, etc.
Then about the third day after your training, you start to realize that the job actually sucks, that it’s pretty loaded with bitch work, and that anyone can do it. You feel like you’ve been gypped, but then again, so have they.
Because although they thought they were hiring someone fluent in three languages, who types 500 WPM and has a 3.78 GPA, they’re not. Instead, they got tricked into hiring you. You, whose only foreign word you know is “burrito,” who types with two fingers (one on each hand), and who really does have a 3.78 if you add 2.78 to your current GPA. Congratulations, both you and your job are actually pretty lame.
Shameful as it may be to admit this, your family is also a prime source to lie to. Other than the fact that I’ve been writing this column for three years, my parents also don’t know that I haven’t applied to law school yet and actually never plan to (woops!) They also don’t know that I’m not their real daughter, but a daughter of the legendary Hohenzollern royal family, who was sent to kill the La family’s real daughter and pose as one of their own in hopes to finally discover where they’ve kept their family treasure, which is rumored to total a whopping 10,000 Russian rubles! (or about 278.52 U.S. dollars … but still, it’s been totally worth it).
But the one group I find almost everybody lying to is the opposite gender. Boys lie to girls to impress them and vice versa. I remember I once told a boy that I could skateboard. He just asked me one day and I miraculously came to the conclusion that indeed I could, “a little bit, you know, small flips and stuff.” And by “flips” I meant me flipping over and scraping the ground with my face because I never stepped foot on a board before.
Because my parents wouldn’t buy me one, I couldn’t secretly learn. So whenever he wanted to see me skateboard and offered his own to use, I’d have a panic attack and tell another lie like I’m not wearing the right shoes, my knees ache in cold weather or I just got out of leg surgery and the only reason why I don’t have a cast on is because it was a “touch up” sort of surgery. When he finally pressured me to the point that I couldn’t back out, I tried it, ate the floor (as predicted), and lied flat on the asphalt while the guy beat me with his skateboard.
These days, the lies aren’t so drastic. Now it’s like the girl you have a crush on tells you something along the lines of, “Oh I love Depeche Mode, do you know them?” and you say “Oh, of course.” Then she goes on naming all these songs that you don’t know, while you try to remember that one fucking song you’ve heard from them (“I Just Can’t Get Enough” is the one you’re thinking about by the way). This then prompts you to go home, download and listen to every DM song ever (which at this point you realize you don’t even like this sort of music), all so you can come back the next week and say, “Remember when we were talking about Depeche Mode, can we talk about them again?” and the girl replies, “Oh, I’ve only listened to like, one of their albums. Sorry.“
Did LYNN LA ever tell you the time she studied abroad in Ireland, spent that one other summer building homes in Sri Lanka and has the other half of this golden locket you’ve been searching for? If not, e-mail her at ldla@ucdavis.edu, and she’ll tell you all about it.
