Learning to Lie

When I was young, my mom paid me to read books. She would pay me by the page, and so I tended to pick either thick books or mounds of thin books. On one particular occasion, I piled up a stack of books and proceeded to negotiate with her for a new mountain bike. We came to an agreement, and I began reading through the rather tall stack of books. It was slow going, slower than I would have liked. That new mountain bike remained at the forefront of my mind the entire time. After making some progress through the mountain of books, I came upon an idea, a simple idea with a high reward. I decided to lie. I decided to wait another week or two and then to tell my mom I had finished reading all the books.

My plan worked smoothly and without a single flaw or suspicion. I had my new mountain bike and nobody was the wiser. Everything about the bike was perfect. It had the gears, breaks, and shocks I wanted. I rode it all over the place, and one day a friend and I raced on the country road between my house and our church. The road was about a mile long and was really rough. It was mostly just tar and gravel. We raced down the first big hill and kept going faster and faster, and we continued peddling as hard as we could down the next hill.

Then a fateful thing happened. My right foot slipped off the pedal and into the spokes of the front wheel. The front wheel came to a lurching halt. I was sent hurtling over the handlebars, and I imagine my legs were flailing as my body flipped in the air. I landed face first onto the knife-like gravel and tar road. I blacked out, and I barely remember any of it. When I regained consciousness and began to get up, I couldn’t feel my lower lip. I turned to my friend and asked, “Am I bleeding? Is my lip still there?” I panicked and began scanning the road for my lower lip. I didn’t see my lip on the road, so I got back on my bike and pedaled as hard as I could back up the big hill and back home.

I burst into the front door, and I am sure blood was dripping everywhere though I do not remember much about it. I went to the bathroom to look in the mirror to check my lip, to see if it was still there. My mom came in wondering what was going on. She saw blood everywhere and the imprint of the road on my forehead. I had a split from my bottom lip down to my chin, not to mention numerous other cuts all over my face.

My mom began to bandage me, and I felt guilty. My stomach was in knots, and I felt a lump in my throat. It was difficult to get around the lump in my throat, but I managed. I cleared my throat, and I told her everything, though there was not much to tell. I told her I had lied about finishing the books. I had read about half of them and lied about the rest.

It was the perfect opportunity for my mom to teach me about the consequences of lying. It was my first new bike, and though I do not have that bike anymore I still have a scar right below my lower lip.

A Jewish rabbi whose name currently evades me said, “Bad guys don’t get away with what they do. We all pay for what we do with one currency or another.”