Trolling for Truth
by Maggie Van Ostrand
Pick up your shovels folks, the truth is somewhere in this pile. In Washington, even the tans are phony. What, a politician lying? Yes, dear. And it was George Washington who started it.
When I was a kid, we honored the birthday of George (“I cannot tell a lie.”) Washington by listening to the grown-ups spin stories of both his honesty and his pitching ability when he threw a half-dollar across the Potomac River. Did he really? We must scratch this myth and sniff out the truth. Actually, it wasn’t a half-dollar Washington threw, it was a British guinea. Further, it wasn’t the Potomac, it was the Rapahannock.
Even as a child, George Washington had the reputation of always telling the truth. It was said that, when 6-year old-George cut down his father’s favorite cherry tree with his new hatchet, he copped to the cut when his father asked, “George, do you know who killed that beautiful little cherry tree yonder in the garden?” We believed the story because they used old-fashioned words like “yonder.” This was little George’s moment of truth, and he bravely replied, "I cannot tell a lie, Papa. I did cut it with my hatchet." What parent in his right mind would give a 6-year-old a hatchet? Probably not even Lizzie Bordon had a hatchet at that young age. If you could find such a parent, today’s hatchets are probably child-proofed like everything else and can’t be accessed without a blowtorch.
I don’t know how anybody could prove whether the story of little George is true but, if his father caught him standing by the cut tree, hatchet in hand, what choice did he have but to tell the truth? I don’t see how little George, caught red-handed, could have even saved himself with the kind of lie all kids tell and you don’t know why they bother. The kind of lie which brings forth in every generation the parents warning, “If you lie to me, you’ll be punished, not for what you did but for lying.” Remember that one? Heard it from your parents? Said it yourself?
What if George really lied and said something like, “The tree was about to attack me and I cut it in self defense.” What could his father have said? “Liar, liar, breeches on fire?”
In Mexico, even white lies are frowned upon. Workers will tell you they’ll be at your place “mañana.” The word “mañana” doesn’t mean “tomorrow” as I always thought, it means “not today.” There’s a certain kindness in telling someone “not today.” How can a person fret when the worker doesn’t show up the next day if they understand the benevolence behind it? Would you rather have the worker say, “Not today, not tomorrow, perhaps not for three weeks?” That could make even the most serene person anxious. But the mañana way, you learn to relax and appreciate it even more when the worker finally shows up. Well, you would in a perfect world.
Probably the most desperately creative lie I ever heard, is attributed to the comedian, Richard Pryor, who, when caught by his wife in a compromising position with another woman, leapt out of bed and said, in the voice of a man unjustly accused, “Who’re ya gonna believe? Me or your lying eyes?” Maybe Pryor wasn’t president of a country, but that was a most political answer.
Nothing but the truth? I have learned that the hard truth is this: people are capable of telling anything but the truth with or without swearing oaths, even presidents, from Washington’s axe to Trump’s ex.
There was one American president who might have been an exception: Harry (“Give ‘em hell”) Truman who said, “I never gave them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it’s hell.”
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