I’m a horrible liar. In fact, I’m probably the worst liar that ever existed on the face of the planet. The problem is that lying makes me nervous, and when I’m nervous, I stumble over words and ramble on and on and make pretty much no sense at all.

I’ve had this problem ever since I was a small child. When I was seven, I spilled nail polish onto my mother’s new carpet and then tried to clean it up with a mixture of nail polish remover and 409. Luckily I did not kill myself and the rest of the occupants of my house. (I’m just guessing here, but that doesn’t sound like a super safe combination in retrospect.) The result of my experimental clean up left a streak of neon green in a carpet that was a sandy-brown color everywhere else.

Needless to say, that was one occasion where I felt the need to lie. Unfortunately, no matter how many times I denied having any knowledge of how the carpet turned that distinct shade of chartreuse, my constant babbling and wide, avoiding eyes gave it all away.

While there have been many times in life that I’ve wished I was more adept at the fine art of lying, (like the time I dyed my sister’s hair and accidentally left her looking like a skunk) I’ve come to live with it. I know my limitations. I’ve learned to be pretty straight forward with people, and I think that has kept me out of a lot of trouble.

In reality, I wish more people had the same inability that I have. Could you imagine a world in which you could generally believe most of the things people told you? It would change the face of the world as we know it.