I consider myself a “compulsive truth-teller.” Ultimately, I see this as a good thing, but it’s also not without its negative consequences — for example, it has granted me an extremely queasy stomach.
Every time I go to lie, or even a half-lie, or just anything that isn’t the entire, full truth as best as I can tell it, my stomach lurches. It’s almost like there’s a frog in there, and he’s trying to leap up into my mouth and use his rubbery webbed fingers to close the folds of my lips, so the lie can’t escape. I can only think of one time when I lied and got away with it, and even then, I couldn’t even do it by myself. It was in middle school. I had stellar attendance.
Ribbit.
Okay, I didn’t. I was there less than 60% of the time, and even then, I was often late. I still had straight As, because I showed up to take tests, and I would work on the material when I was at home. I just didn’t show up to school.
That’s why, honestly, a part of me was surprised — maybe even proud — that I even showed up to school on the day that I lied. But as I trudged up the two flights of linoleum stairs, a much larger part of me argued that this wasn’t much of an achievement. Most kids showed up every day.
Still, my feet dragged the rest of my body toward the closed “Health II” classroom door. Since my hands were free due to the lack of a tardy slip, I used both to try to turn the handle as quietly as possible — but to my dismay, the entire class was silent as students turned to observe my belated entrance.
Usually, our Health II class was taught by a thin, energetic woman, who didn’t mind me being late (maybe she was appreciative of me showing up at all). But on that day, an older, wiry woman stood in her place, adjusting her red, rectangular glasses on the tip of her nose as she looked down at me.
For some reason, despite the changeup, I was still convinced I could play it off. I was only late by a few minutes, so I thought, maybe this new lady wouldn’t mind. I tried my best to nonchalantly take my seat, but I could tell that her eyes were following me.
“Do you have a tardy pass?” she asked plainly.
“No,” I said, but then with a bit too long of a pause, I added, “But, um, I was helping in the office this morning.”
She furrowed her eyebrows.
“Okay, well I need you to go back down and come back with a pass then,” she said.
Unsure how to escape from that, I began to stand. I considered just leaving the class and ditching again. The office wouldn’t have seen me if I slipped out the back exit.
But I didn’t have to. A small yet matter-of-fact voice emerged from the back of the classroom to rescue me: “Brooklyn wouldn’t lie. She’s a straight-A student and is a member of our student council. I’m sure she was helping in the office.”
I turned and discovered that the voice came from a young girl who I had never spoken to before. She had raven hair and thick eyeliner — and those are the only two things I know about her to this day. Well, and the fact that she’s willing to lie for a stranger, I guess. Unless, maybe she really did think I was telling the truth, and was trying to stand up for me.
Maybe she was a witch. Maybe she cursed me with this frog. Maybe she even somehow hypnotized the substitute, because, for some reason, she didn’t say anything else about the lack of a tardy slip after I sat back down. She just pushed her red glasses back up onto her face.
I didn’t say anything, either, but inside, the newly-born frog angrily slapped around and croaked. I felt nauseous every time I was in that classroom afterward, even after the substitute teacher was long gone.
To be fair, part of what the raven-haired girl had said was true. I did get good grades, and I was still on our student council. (The meetings were before school with my favorite math teacher, so I would show up for those and then ditch the rest of the day.)
But the part she had gotten wrong was that, obviously, I had lied. Did she know I was lying and was helping to play the part? Or had I lied so well that she believed me, and just backed it up with what she had perceived from my character? But why stand up in a classroom full of judgy middle schoolers and say that to defend someone you’ve never spoken to before?
I’m not sure which is worse. I think that’s why I avoided ever talking to her.
Regardless, the frog rules me now, and I still sometimes go back and forth on whether or not it’s a curse. I do think it’s wrong to lie, and in many cases, I wouldn’t choose to lie, even if I could.
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