Everybody lies. Everybody. But when it
comes to lying under pressure, most of us suck at it.
Spontaneous bullshitting is an art. In
fact, there's a whole form of live theatre dedicated to it. (I
suggest joining an improv group if you're really serious about this.
If nothing else, it will make you a little less serious.)
When I was 16, I went to Paris with my
friends – my first holiday ever without adults. Having been fully
briefed by my parents, I was determined to be sensible and not get
murdered. Early on in the holiday, a potential murderer
young Parisian guy approached us in a park and asked me my name.
I had a miniature internal freak-out at
the potentially fatal consequences of giving personal information to
a stranger.
Me: *looks around* Umm... Grass. And
*points to friends* this is Tree, Flower... Bush and... Stick.”
I swear characters do this a lot in bad
comedies. Those are probably the only instances where the other party
is dumb enough to fall for it. Unless you're lucky, like I was, and
the person you're trying to lie to has a limited knowledge of
English.
Anyway, turns out I wasn't the only one
making things up as I went along.
Parisian: Grass! You have a
beautiful name. My mother- no! -my grandmother's name is Grass!
Setting aside the highly unlikely
possibilities that a) anyone actually thinks the name 'Grass' is
beautiful and b) some old lady in France is actually called Grass,
Parisian was quite clearly bullshitting too. Changing his mind
halfway through a sentence just made the already terrible lie even
worse.
It's just occurred to me that maybe
Parisian knew all along and his response intended to display
some kind of socratic irony. But perhaps I'm giving him too much
credit.
