Pants on Fire

I was a liar.

When I was in junior high, signet initial rings were a big deal.  A boy would give his to a girl he liked.  The girl would wrap fuzzy yarn around the ring to make it fit, then show it off to all her friends and enemies on the bus and at school.

Oh how I wanted one. Both boyfriend and ring.

My mom had an signet initial ring in her jewelry box.  I don't know who she got it from, when or why.  We only talked about it once - when she told me to take it off of my finger after I'd swiped it from her jewelry box, worn it to school for three days and told kids that it was from my boyfriend who lived in Elwood, Indiana (home of my cousins, and far enough away that no one in our little town would be the wiser).  Sigh.  Because of my short, stubby sausage-like fingers, the ring fit snugly without the addition of fuzzy yarn, and after three days of wearing it at school, I forgot to take it off when I got off the bus that third afternoon; I pried it off my finger and handed it to my mom as she reminded me, "Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive." 

We never spoke of it again. 

When I went to college, I lied and told my new friends about my imaginary travels, my many fake accomplishments and my hometown boyfriend who didn’t exist.

When I came back home for Thanksgiving break my freshman year, I lied and told my old friends about my new college boyfriend who didn’t exist.

I quit lying when I finally realized that I was interesting and smart enough not to lie about things I had done. I quit lying about boyfriends when I finally had one. 

Oh, I’ve lied since college.  My driver’s license weight has always been a big lie.  I’ve lied about Santa, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy.  I’ve lied about how much things cost and about who ate the last of the Oreos. 

And I've been caught in the tangled web more than once. 

My mom believed so firmly in truth - and staying out of the web - that it never would have occurred to her that even doctors would lie.  

In the mid-90's, my mom's breast cancer came back with a fucking vengeance.  She had beat it once, but after 6 years of tamoxifen-induced cancer-free life, it came back.  Mom and dad didn't talk to their kids about it too much - I know they didn't want to worry us. Go home.  Don't worry.  Take care of your family, they insisted.  But dad was searching, searching, searching for cures.  He found one through oncologists in Indianapolis, fought with their insurance company to get them to pay for this new treatment, and was ready to sell the farm to make it happen for mom.  It was all so promising.  Except that the treatment was a big lie.  

Here is the blurb from Amazon about the book written about this big lie, False Hope:  Bone Marrow Transplantation for Breast Cancer (Rettig, Jacobson, Farquhar and Aubry):

In the late 1980s, a promising new treatment for breast cancer emerged: high-dose chemotherapy with autologous bone marrow transplantation or HDC/ABMT. By the 1990s, it had burst upon the oncology scene and disseminated rapidly before having been carefully evaluated. By the time published studies showed that the procedure was ineffective, more than 30,000 women had received the treatment, shortening their lives and adding to their suffering. This book tells of the rise and demise of HDC/ABMT for metastatic and early stage breast cancer, and fully explores the story's implications, which go well beyond the immediate procedure, and beyond breast cancer, to how we in the United States evaluate other medical procedures, especially life-saving ones. 

It details how the factors that drove clinical use ... converged to propel the procedure forward despite a lack of proven clinical effectiveness. *

Dad and I sat in uncomfortable plastic chairs in her hospital room at Methodist in Indianapolis where she was zipped into a plastic bubble.  She had had her bone marrow extracted and "cleaned" and had undergone the most horrendous doses of chemotherapy meant to bring her sweet little body near to the point of death before they replaced her marrow cells.  There were long plastic "gloves" through which we could put our hands and arms and hold mom's hand, but they were too small for dad's huge hands.  He cried about those stupid gloves on our walk to the car, where he said, "What the hell are we doing?  What have we done to her?  Almost killed her to make her better?"  And he cried some more. 

The doctors had lied.  Mom died.  Probably sooner than she would have died without that treatment.  There was a class action suit; dad declined to participate.  What the hell good would it do now? he asked.

And we never spoke of it again. 

I think those doctors really believed that the best treatment for breast cancer in the late 80's/early 90's was the bone marrow transplant; they fudged, then published, their results so more women could be helped more quickly.  And they were wrong.  Is lying OK when you think it might save someone's life?

People lie when they've found themselves in a tight spot.  "The dog ate my homework."  "The check is in the mail."  "I would never say/do a thing like that!"  "I'm on my way!"  "Of course this signet ring is from my out-of-town boyfriend."

People involved in politics, on governing boards, in service and civic organizations lie to get things done.  They inflate statistics, deflate costs, exaggerate stories of woe.  They believe their lies are for the greater good.  Is it really lying when one has been voted in/appointed/charged by God to make a difference, if one truly believes it's all for the betterment of our fellow humans? 

Or they lie to save their own asses.  If I have to lie to save my job, my career, my income, my benefits and my standing in the community - keep food in my children's mouths, for God's sake -  isn't that OK?   

I'm writing fiction based on a very big thing that really happened to me and my family.  I have embellished our story.  A lot.  In my book, I have killed off my parents and don't have any siblings.  Almost every time I read part of my story to my writing circle, I preface it with "this really isn't the way it happened." 

I was a liar.  Maybe I still am.  Maybe a wild imagination and a lying demeanor are two sides of the same coin.  

Maybe lying is who we, as humans, are -  who we have become.  We need to be seen as a little more popular, smarter, richer, cooler,righteous than we really are. If we can get away with it.  If we're not called out on our BS.  

And sometimes, even if our lies are exposed, we still get our projects approved.  Get our pictures on the front of the paper.  Advance in our careers. Get to sit in the Oval Office.

And sometimes we just have to give the ring back. 
And never talk about it again.

Peace.

*I have that book, if you need a reason to be sad and would like to read it.