When I was five or six years old, living in our last home in Los Angeles, I started to develop my social skills. We lived on a street with many other children, and every day was spent playing in groups outdoors. On occasion, we ventured into one another’s homes and compared lifestyles.
I remember marveling at a bedroom shared by two sisters who had not only their own record player, as I did, but also their own couch and small television. Imagine! A television in a kid’s bedroom! To me this was incredible, a sign of a truly luxurious life. When I expressed my astonishment, asking if their parents really let them have their own TV, one of the sisters replied “of course” in a tone implying that everyone in the world had their own television in their bedroom.
I was acutely aware of how my life was different from the lives of my friends. Not only did I not have my own television, but there was no television watching at all in my home. One morning at school, I was sitting at a long table with several children who were excitedly discussing King Kong, which had aired on television the night before.
I listened carefully and quietly as they energetically described their favorites scenes. I wanted to be a part of their interactions even though I had nothing to contribute, having never seen the movie. I laughed when they laughed, smiled when they smiled, pretending that I understood exactly what they were saying, knowing that I couldn’t possibly reveal the truth, that I hadn’t watched the movie, that there was no TV in my home.
Admitting to being different would make me an outcast, an object of ridicule, a freak and a weirdo. I began to feel confident in my passive interaction, but then my pleasure was shattered. One of the boys, who had just finished describing his favorite part of the movie, turned to me and asked me what mine was.
I was terrified. What should I say? I couldn’t possibly admit now to never having seen the movie. They would know that I had deceived them, and I would be deemed even more of a freak than if I had told the truth from the start. Gripped by terror, I could have frozen, I could have mumbled “I don’t know,” but instead, somehow, without any premeditation, I suddenly and enthusiastically mentioned a scene in the movie.
The words spilled out of my mouth without my control. I watched their faces carefully, certain that I had just described something that had nothing whatsoever to do with the movie in question. I no longer remember what I said. Maybe I simply repeated what someone else had said minutes earlier. Maybe, in my panic, I managed to invent a sort of generic scene that occurs in most movies.
Whatever it was I said, the boy next to me replied “oh yeah! I really liked that too!” I was relieved, pleased, surprised, and confused. How did I pull it off?
Maybe, just maybe, because we were all only six years old, the boy next to me responded the way he did not because I described a scene he remembered, but because I spoke with enough confidence to make him doubt his own memories, inspiring him to lie in response to my lie, so that no one would think less of him for not remembering something cool.
I’ve never thought of that possibility until now, thirty-two years later, as I write this. I’ve never been much of a liar, never learned until well into adulthood that most people will believe anything they are told, so long as the speaker sounds convincing.
Then again, maybe I really did just repeat what another kid said earlier.
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