To Be a Good Liar You Have to Know the Truth

It's been cold, windy, rainy. As you get older, and I know a little about that, while at the same time forgetting a lot about everything else, your world closes in around you. Going to the park is one of the few pleasures from my past that I can still indulge in. It's not that far to the park, but it gets longer every year. With winter not that far away I find myself getting moodier. My Margaret says I should get a cat like Art Carney had in that movie Harry and Tonto, but she says don't you dare go traipsing about the country like he did. Life is not a movie she tells me. My father, the vaudevillian Sean Houlihan, said life is no stage Frankie, the stage is fun. With that said I firmly believe my father, like a child, had the gift of make believe, and lived his life as though it were a stage. But another thing he liked to say is that there is not a whole lot of difference between make believe and lying, and to be a good liar you have to know what the truth is.  And I also believe that my father never intentionally let his make believe, lying, world do anything but enhance the truthful one.

This brings back another thing Henry was adamant about concerning the moron in the White House. He kept saying that we need a leader who would never lie to us. Since the whole thing started with that young woman who thought I should have a relationship with Jesus, I asked him if he ever thought Jesus lied, and that if Bush is a Christian, and I believe he believes he is, than maybe Bush hasn't been lying either. So Henry assures me that there is no way Jesus ever lied. I then proceed to ask him whether he did or did not say that the meek shall inherit the earth, and he tells me that they may someday, and anyway he might have been speaking figuratively, which is something Henry must have heard somewhere, because I don't think he is capable of a figurative thought myself. So I tell him I think a couple thousand years may outstay the welcome of even a figurative someday, and he tells me I am playing with fire calling Jesus a liar. So anyway I tell him that maybe, like Jesus, Bush speaks a figurative truth being a good Christian that I believe he believes he is.

So Henry reminds me that Bush, unlike Jesus, is indeed a moron and not smart enough to know the truth figurative or otherwise. So I ask him whether someone who doesn't know the truth can lie, and he admits probably not. I can see that this is very disturbing to him: this possibility that Bush is not a liar, but simply a plain old common everyday moron. So I tell him he should not degrade the fine craft of lying based upon the abilities of someone who is incapable of it, and that he should hold out the possibility of voting for a liar, so long as he, and I suppose a she, is good at it.

He says in response, Frankie you are going to hell. I tell him I will see him there, to which he says that's a terrible thing to say to a friend. What can I say, Henry is an old and dear friend.

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