I’m not trying to sound like I’m bragging or anything, but I like to think that I’m a pretty good person. I’m honest, I don’t steal, I always try to help out people when I can and I rarely put my needs in front of those of others. Despite this, I’m actually a pretty good liar.

I don’t lie to hurt people or to hide anything I’ve done, because I am of Lawful Good alignment and that goes against my moral code. I’m actually really bad at that, which sucked when I was a teenager because I could never sneak around anywhere because whenever I’d tell a lie to my mom I’d feel awful about it and fess up ten minutes later. No, I lie to entertain, not to manipulate.

I like to think up little stories and get people to believe them, and Christina and her sister fall for them EVERY time. I don’t really know how I got started with it, but sometimes a little fact will pop into my head and I make up reasoning for it and try to convince them it’s true.

Once, we were watching the Celtics play on TV and I thought about how typically in sports the home team wears white while the visiting team wears a darker color. A reason popped into my head, so I said it.

“Do you know why in sports, the home team wears white and the away team wears a color?”

“No, why?”

“Because it’s human nature to associate goodness with light and evil with dark. That way the home team always looks like the good guys and the visitors look like bad guys for the crowd.”

“Wow, really? I had no idea.”

“I actually just made that up. It makes sense though, doesn’t it?”

I also once convinced Christina’s sister that there was a Japanese version of Bill Nye the Science Guy called Bill Kawasakai the Science Guy and she believed me. Honestly I have no idea WHERE that came from.

I don’t really plan them out, either. I think it’s the storyteller in me, but the ideas just hit me, usually when someone asks a question about why something is the way it is, and I just kind of blurt it out. The only one I DID plan out was kind of a doozy, it came to me at a weird time and I KNEW I had to save it, because if I busted it out at the wrong time, no one would go for it.

Then Christina and I were looking at a children’s book of puzzles and my moment came.

“Do you know why they call those puzzles mazes?”

“No, why?”

“It comes from the Native American word for corn, maize. You know how corn grows all high like that and it looks like a maze from above? That’s how they got the idea for the puzzle.”

“Wow, really?”

“Nope. I just made it up.”

See, the key here is the same as any situation that calls for good acting: YOU have to believe it. If YOU don’t believe it, THEY won’t believe it.

But like I said, this is a power I only use for good. Well, not really GOOD per se, but for my own amusement. Which I guess is pretty bad. I guess the moral of the story is don’t be  like me, I’m kind of a jerk to my wife sometimes.