White Lies and Fibs

by Eleanor Lippman

The first time I ever heard my father tell a lie, I outright confronted him. I was just a little kid.

Apparently, he was embarrassed and uncomfortable about being caught by a little kid who heard him not telling the truth but it was too late to change what he had said earlier.

My father had been immersed in a long telephone conversation. It sounded to me to be very complicated and very emotional. At times he was angry and then he would speak in a measured, patient voice. Then there would be a long silence as he listened to what the caller was saying. Then more talking, more listening, and finally, he said something that even I, as a little kid, knew was not true.

I did not understand what they were talking about as it was all very grown-up talk, too complicated for a little person. But I do remember listening to my father, my favorite human being, my idol, tell a blatant lie. After he hung up the phone, in my prissy little voice, I asked him, already knowing he had told a lie to someone.

He paused and looked at me and realized he had some explaining to do. He had to scramble to justify what he had said.

I was a little kid and usually, in situations like this, he would pull me onto his lap and surrounded by his strong arms, he’d talk to me. His lap-side conversations always began with him singing a refrain of the song from the musical “Guys and Dolls”. “I love you a bushel and a peck,” was his love song to me. This time, no song. He talked to me face to face, with a face more serious than I ever remembered. I stood there and he kneeled down to be at my eye level, his cornflower blue eyes staring directly into my hazel eyes.

His tried to explain the difference between a bald-faced lie, a little white lie, and a fib. He gave example after example, each time simplifying the back story and inventing an outcome with each showing that a big lie was hurtful and caused serious damage while a little while lie could be kind and comforting. A fib was just impertinence, a little jab to the heart. It was all very confusing to me and my face must have revealed that I still couldn’t tell the difference.

“So let me try again,” he would say and careen off to another story. No better. In my simple mind, a lie was a lie. A bald faced lied was big and bold, a white lie gentle, and a fib was a sort of joke. It didn’t make very much sense to me, a little kid who only saw things in black and white.

But he was my father, my hero, and if he said he was just telling a harmless fib, well, I guess it did not hurt anyone. (Or did it?)