One strand in web of lies reveals fibber's sex

Ever have one of those ideas that skips tantalizingly from brain cell to brain cell, avoiding conscious focus? I chased one of those for a while this morning.

Something had caught my eye a couple of weeks ago, and I had set it aside in the interest of doing my job in elevating the blood pressures of political whiners who think their leaders, symbols and policies should be deified.

Now what was it?

Let me go through this stuff on my desk. Was it something in this report from my mutual fund telling me (a couple of weeks before the fall) that WorldCom had only some minor bookkeeping problems and was still a strong competitor, and that's why the mutual fund was still pouring millions of dollars into its stock?

No? Was it the letter from a credit card company telling me I had been "preapproved"? or was it the phone message from the same company telling me I was disapproved because I already had too many preapproved credit cards?

Was it this e-mail about a pill that would, er, enhance a physical attribute?

What was it? What was it?

Oh, yeah, now I remember.

It was LYING!

I had read a Newhouse News story about a University of Massachusetts study that showed that lies are a part of everyday life, that people will tell an average of two or three lies during a brief conversation and that men and women lie for different reasons.

Men, the study is quoted as saying, will lie to make themselves look good. Women will lie to make the person they are with feel better.

"Do you think that's true?" I asked my wife as I flexed my 20-inch biceps in the mirror and marveled that I, at 58, do not have a wrinkle or an ounce of fat on my frame.

"Absolutely, my buff-nugget stud-muffin," she said.

Hmmm.

I had never really thought of gender-oriented lying before, although you can't work in my business and not know that much, if not most, of what comes out of people's mouths is false.

All prison inmates are innocent and are only in prison because their crooked lawyers conspired with equally crooked prosecutors and judges to hide a perfectly plausible alternative explanation for the bodies buried in their back yards.

All politicians are motivated only by a desire to serve and can't wait to get elected so they can defy the evil lobbyists who have been buying their predecessors for generations and will try to do the same with them.

I think most of us know that some lying is necessary for us to get somewhat peacefully through each day.

If I am wrong, the next time someone asks you, "Do these pants make me look fat," try answering, truthfully, "I don't know, why don't you ask that lamp you just knocked off the end table," and see how the rest of your morning goes.

Be upfront the next time your boss says, "Do you think I'm stupid?" And learn to flinch any time you ask anyone anywhere except a seismologist if the earth moved.

It is no longer wise to expect anything approaching honesty in corporate reports, political speeches, ice dancing judging, auto sales, cell-phone plans, expiration dates on meat or any city anywhere promising to be a vacation mecca while using photographs taken in other cities.

Americans lie in bed, on their resumes, to food servers ("bring an extra spoon and I'll have one, teeny bite") and, of course, to their government.

Actually, that part works out okay. We agree to believe that the government has our best interests at heart, and it pretends, most of the time, to believe us when we say we gave thousands of dollars to Third World charities but the records were destroyed in an unfortunate fire.

I think the same fire destroyed the records of my Olympic gold medals, my military decorations for bravery and all of the correspondence from beautiful models who have been stalking me over the years.

And my wife, to make me feel better, swears that she believes it and that she is not winking, she has something in her eye.

And I believe her.

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