I can’t lie.  Believe me.  I’ve tried doing it before but have come to realize that I’m totally transparent so now I only tell the truth as I know it.  I used to think the transparency of me was because I’m such a pasty white person.  In the past, even though I was telling the truth, I’ve found that I’ve had to lie just to get people to believe me.  I found this out at an early age which makes me feel like maybe I was a wise child rather than the clingy, whiney creature my mother likes to paint me out to be.  I used to cry easily as a child and when someone wouldn’t believe me it hurt me deeply so I would tear up and blubber until I was told for the millionth time that only liars cry.  That’s when I would lie and let the nonbelievers figure out the truth for themselves.

 The first time I remember using the lie-to-be-believed method I must have been about three years old.  I was being babysat by my grandparents for the weekend because, according to my ancient memory of this, my parents were in Vegas, or maybe they went to a wedding for the weekend, or maybe they were in the next room but I don’t remember them being there.  Anyway, what I do remember is sitting at my grandparents’ kitchen table eating sloppy Joes and trying so hard not to spill the messy sandwich down the front of my favorite green velour shirt.  Oh, that shirt was a beauty; it was the signature look for every three-year-old of the late seventies.  I didn’t mind if the meat and sauce slopped down on my jeans because I hated them.  The jeans were also a signature look of little kids of the seventies, every kid I knew had them and they looked equally as stupid on everyone.  The pants had a flat front and an elastic waistband only in the back with no back pockets.  How I longed for those sophisticated oh-so-grown-up back pockets.  My sister had already graduated up into the next age appropriate jeans.  Hers had a zipper and a snap with no elastic and two beautiful back pockets that, if she had one, she could have carried a comb back there.  With those jeans came more attention from grown ups and an extra special pee-pee dance because the zipper was always getting stuck.

 So, there I sat, carefully eating my sandwich, when my uncle Cal swooped me out of my chair by grabbing the back of my elastic-banded pants.  I was dangling in front of him thinking that this was such a great way to get picked up since no one ever held me by the seat of my pants before.  I felt like I was flying and didn’t care that I could feel bursts of air traveling down my bare butt since along with the pants he grabbed my undies too.  In Uncle Cal’s other hand was a brownie, which was my grandmother’s baking specialty.  I eyed the brownie with desire, knowing that I would get one too if I finished my sandwich like a good girl.  Cal saw me looking at his brownie and asked if I wanted it.  Of course I wanted it, what kid would say no to dessert in the middle of supper.  Cal set me on my feet and I held out my hands waiting for my forbidden treat.  He paused for a second so I thought he was waiting for my manners.  “Pleeaassee?” I squeaked out in my little mouse voice.  A smile spread across his face.  I thought I hit the bull’s eye with cuteness.  Cal bent over, pulled the elastic of my jeans and underwear out, and deposited the brownie down the back of my pants.  When he let go, the sting of the elastic hitting my skin hurt enough, but then he smacked my rear smashing the brownie into the crack of my ass.  “Sit down and finish eating and I’ll give you a brownie to eat,” he told me.

 Cal picked me up again, this time under my arms, and deposited me back to my booster seat at the table.  I was humiliated.  The more I squirmed, the more smooshed the brownie was.  The crumbs were itchy and the walnuts my grandma always included were sharp against my butt.  I started crying.  All of the other grown ups were in the living room watching a Brewer’s game so no one saw what Cal had done.  I started crying louder to get someone’s attention.  My Aunt Lydia (who really isn’t my aunt by blood or marriage but was always at family functions which makes me think that maybe she was my grandpa’s mistress after my grandma had her stroke) walked into the kitchen to see what all the fuss was about.  “What’s wrong, rug rat?” she asked in a tone that was anything but kind and patient.  “Uncle Cal put a brownie in my undies,” I wailed back.  Cal shrugged his shoulders and shook his head in denial.  “Liar,” Lydia hissed and walked back out to the living room. 

 I had to take matters into my own tiny hands.  I slid out of my chair and walked bow legged into the living room.  I went up to my grandpa who was sitting in his Archie Bunker chair.  “Grandpa,” I lamented.  “Uncle Cal shoved a brownie down my undies.”  My grandpa chuckled, thinking I was just telling him something silly, and gently moved me out the way since I was standing between him and his big consol TV.  I went to my grandma, even though I knew she wouldn’t help me.  “Grandma, Cal put a brownie in my underpants.”  My grandmother pursed her lips together and put her hands firmly on her matching Archie Bunker chair.  “Little girls don’t make pretty tattlers.” 

 I was so frustrated at this point.  I stomped my foot about to go into a full-fledged temper tantrum.  When I stomped my foot, crumbs from the brownie scattered across the carpet.  My Aunt Mary (real aunt by marriage) walked into the room just as the crumbs settled on the yellow shag carpet.  “Jessie,” she said gently kneeling in front of me.  “Did you poo your pants?”  I figured if this is what it was going to take to get the itchy brownie out of my britches I would go along with it.  “Yes!!” I wailed.  “I pooped my pants big and messy!”

 Mary picked me up by my armpits and carried me to the bathroom making sure to keep me extended in front of her so as to not smudge her white sundress with my pretend poop.  Hansel and Gretel would have loved me because with every step Mary took, I left a wonderful chocolaty trail for someone to follow.  Carefully, Mary deposited me standing in the bathtub.  She almost lovingly untied my shoes and set them on top of the bathroom scale making it look like a naked invisible person was weighing themselves with only shoes on.  Mary carefully pulled the elastic of my pants and underwear out as far as they both would go so she wouldn’t leave excrement trails down my legs.  She must have been holding her breath while she was doing this since anyone would have been able to smell a load as big as I was carrying.  With every motion I made, crumbs (or nuggets as she must have thought them to be) spewed into the tub.  Finally, with my pants off, my chocolate butt airing, Mary noticed the texture of my “poop”.  “Is that a walnut?” she asked.  I shrugged my shoulders not knowing what to say since when I insisted there was a brownie down there, no one believed me.  She wasn’t in the room when I was being an ugly tattler.

 Slowly, Mary lifted my underwear to her nose and took a quick little whiff.  Not believing what she smelled, she breathed in deeper.  “Jessie is this chocolate?”  I nodded my head and pouted for good measure.  “Is this a brownie?”  Again, I nodded my head and looked at my feet in remorse.  She started laughing.  I lifted my head.  I thought I’d be in trouble since when ever anyone discovered something in my pants that wasn’t supposed to be there I usually got punished.  “How’d you sit on a brownie?”  I told her what happened.  I told her that I tried telling everyone what happened but no one believed me.  She seemed mad, so I thought now I was in trouble.  But, instead, she picked me up and held me to her hip, this time not minding if my mess got on her dress since she knew it was only chocolate.  She carried me back out to the living room with my still-crusty butt exposed to anyone who bothered to look.  She brought my underwear with her, the clump of brownie still clinging as a mashed up mess.

 Mary set me down in the middle of the living room and went up to Cal.  She threw the underwear at him, which I remember made him flinch.  She yelled at Cal, who was only her brother-in-law, she yelled at Lydia, who insisted that she only knew kids to lie, and she yelled at my grandparents.  Everyone apologized to Mary.  No one apologized to me even though it was me who had suffered the injustice.  I know I should let it go, it’s all brownie under the butt.  I mean water under the bridge.

 Even now, the only way I can sort of somewhat lie is by telling the truth and have someone not believe me, which makes him or her suggest an alternate truth to him or her, which would be a lie to me.  It’s easier to let them figure it out on their own rather than to be second-guessed all the way through life.  So, now you know that about me.  I don’t lie.  Oh, and I don’t eat brownies.  To me, they smell great but taste like shit.