Little White Lies

I got married at age nineteen to another nineteen year old. We did so somewhat spontaneously.

He had just gotten a job at McDonald's and may not have had his first paycheck yet. I paid for the simple wedding rings, blood tests, marriage license, cab fare, dinner and a movie that constituted our quiet little elopement.

He had plans to join the military and I imagined or perhaps we talked about a scenario where he promptly got into the military and a few weeks or months later, we would do some simple little ceremony with family and pretend that was our wedding date.

It took him over a year to get into the military. 

I dropped out of college without an explanation for anyone because I was secretly married, he was living with his family and I with mine and I was not willing to commit fraud involving federal government student grants by claiming to still be single when I wasn't and didn't wish to admit the truth to my parents.

Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.

He did get into the military and we did spend twenty-two years together and had two kids together and etc. Both our families learned we had been secretly married for over a year and nothing really ruinous came of it.

But it stuck with me that this little white lie never dies. It never goes away. It's always there for the rest of your life and can have substantial consequences you didn't anticipate.

It never becomes not a lie and sooner or later people are likely to learn of it.

The more you try to cover it up and the longer you do so, the more lies you have to tell and the more real world stuff must become deranged to accommodate your lie, especially if you want to avoid other bigger lies or bigger consequences for it.

Like jail for committing fraud involving the federal government. Carrying on "like normal" would have meant letting my father fill out my paperwork as usual, listing my maiden name and claiming I was single.

If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.

-- Mark Twain 

I've spent a lot of time over the years wondering how to be both honest and diplomatic. My first big exercise in sorting such questions was when I turned up unexpectedly pregnant and wanted my baby to know the truth about their origin story but didn't wish to hurt the kid.

By the time he was born, I concluded there was zero conflict. He wasn't unwanted which is what I felt I would be telling him if I told him the truth.

I married the man I did because I wanted kids with him. We just talked about having kids later.

So my eldest spent his childhood hearing polite, tongue in cheek versions of the truth.

He was told he was a surprise birthday present from the universe.

He was told he arrived unfashionably early, seven years ahead of schedule.

He was told I was just trying to have a good time.

He feels fine about himself and about his relationship to me. And I learned to work at figuring out exactly what I want to say to people and not assume that x true thing requires some ugly baked in assumption like "You arriving earlier than we intended means you weren't wanted and we don't love you."

I didn't even really lie to anyone. It's not like my parents were ASKING me daily if I was still single.

Most lies most people tell are far less innocent than "I eloped, imagined my new husband would very soon have a job capable of supporting us and that didn't happen. Oops!" 

Often, it says something ugly about the person's character. And no matter how it goes, odds are very large that it gets uglier with each passing day and someday it will be revealed.