Things My Father Taught Me

"Don't ever lie to me," my father would say.

Ever see Robert Duvall in The Great Santini? My father, ladies and gentlemen. Without the alcoholism. The oldest of five children raised under the rigidly expectant, impossibly strict, Bronx, pre-Vatican II Irish Catholic, middle-class, Marine Corps, there-is-right-there-is-wrong-there-is-black-there-is-white- there-is-no-gray world view of the Great Santini, I found myself able to lip-synch the continuing script as it was repeated every two years or so for the next temporarily insane up-and-coming sibling.

"There are two types of people in this world that I absolutely cannot stand and will not have in my presence," he'd hiss. "Liars. And thieves. And in my experience," I'd silently mouth along with him, "if you are one, you are the other. And no child of mine will be a liar. Or a thief.

As you get older, now, you will find yourself facing peer-pressure, and societal pressures, and plenty of opportunities to disappoint your father with poor choices made. You will not always make the correct choice. You will not always make the choice that you would have made if you had stopped and asked yourself, first, 'What would dad think of this?' I understand that. That is called 'growing up.' You're going to screw up. You're going to do things that disappoint me.

But," he'd emphasize with an intimidating lean in and squinted eye, "Don't you ever lie to me. Remember, I know everything. If you have done something wrong, something you know will disappoint me, or even make me angry, operate on the belief that I already know about it. We parents have a direct line to one another. We have eyes in the backs of our heads and the hearing of bats. If you think you might blame 'Dave,' or 'Jimmy,' or 'Mary,' you'd better think twice and operate on the belief that I have already spoken to their parents.

You might be afraid to tell me the truth. You may think I will get mad, or that you will be punished. You're right. I will. And you will. But," he'd lower his voice to a near-whisper at this part, "whatever anger or punishment you might have experienced had you looked me in the eye and told me the truth will be NOTHING compared to to the WRATH OF GOD you will experience the very first time you ever look me in the eye and LIE to me!

And remember this," he'd say, in an almost sympathetic tone, "More important than the eyes in the back of my head and my bat-like hearing is the fact that liars are always their own undoing. Liars always, in the end, give themselves away. Because, if you tell one lie, you always have to tell a second lie when questioned about the first, and then a third, to make the first two seem more like the truth. Finally, all of the lies come tumbling down like a house of cards. Knowing everything, as I do, I will see through your lies. I will question you about them. I will force you to concoct more lies. And then I will hang you with them. And you will wish you had never been born.

Your chances of fooling me with lies may be one in a thousand. And you may think youself pretty slick, at first, should you fool me. But, that real slick feeling will soon give way to a real sick feeling. Because every single time you look at yourself in the mirror after having lied to fool me, your father who loves you, you will see not only a liar, but a liar and a thief. A thief of trust. And that's not what I'm raising."

In my mid-forties now and dad to six myself, I realize that my father was absolutely right.