Liar

Before you think that I caught you lying to me (or someone else) and am calling you out, I want to let you know this is not the reason I am writing. This is another in the mp3 game. I let the mp3 player choose a random song, which is then the title of my post. I have to come up with a somewhat sensical blog post.

So, alas, I am not calling you a liar.

I am, however, going to call myself a liar.

You read that correctly.

I. Am. A. Liar.

At times in my life, I've even been a dang good liar. My mission was one of those times.

I know. I know. You are supposed to be on your best behavior on your mission. But here's the deal. I was really good. MOST of the time. But there were times that I just couldn't be perfect.

So I would lie.

Unfortunately, most of the time, it was in the letters I sent to my family.

(This is background information, which some people may not find too useful or relevant, but others won't "get" the story without it. Read it if you want. Don't if you don't care. But if you are still reading, chances are, you won't stop. Especially since I'm done. )

I went into the MTC the end of September for 3 weeks. Which means I got to Missouri the middle of October. I "killed" my first companion that month (she had been out on her mission 17 months, and went home in November).

I then got one of my favorite companions--Sister White (now Nicole Ungerman). She was scheduled to go home the beginning of January and intended to work hard up to the airport. And we had oh-so-much-fun.

We were in a wealthy-ish area and had dinner appointments every evening. The first Sunday of the month was with the Blah-Blah Family; the first Monday of the month was with the What's Their Name Family; and so on.

So, of course, we had a dinner appointment scheduled for Thanksgiving! It was with the Who's It Family. They had the third Thursday. I think I let me family know the eating arrangements in one of my first letters I sent. (And I say sent, because I would sometimes write letters and not send them. I have always been good at procrastination. I'm even so good, I can check it off my to-do list--you know, the list I call my Ta-Da's.)

Well, the letter I wrote to my family went something like this:

Things are going okay.
We've been tracting a lot.
It's getting cold here.
I bought some boots to keep my feet warm.
Something happened with our dinner appointment
last Thursday and they had to cancel.
We ended up going to the K-Mart deli (side note from Stephanie
in 2009--do you remember the K-mart deli and the K-mart
cafeteria?).
We got some sliced turkey just before they closed for the day.
It ended up being pretty good.

I intended on telling my family later in the letter that it was a joke and we had a yummy dinner, but it wasn't the same as spending the day with my family.

Only, I forgot that part.

Fast forward about four weeks, or so.

I'm talking to my family on Christmas day, telling them what I've been doing, asking what they have been doing, etc....

Then my mom asks about Thanksgiving dinner. I think I had forgotten all about it, since when you lie, you forget lots of the details involved. (That was for all you parents, whose children may be reading this. I wanted to make sure they know that lying only gets you into trouble. And never out of trouble.) (I'm a giver that way.)

I ask her what she is talking about and she reminds me of how I was deprived of Thanksgiving and she knows that the missionaries in her ward had about 57 dinner appointments that day. (Ok. Here is the embarassing thing. I don't really remember what she said, so I MAY have stretched the truth about what she said about the missionaries in her ward. Or that she even mentioned them.)

I then had to confess to her that I had been using a little thing I call "poetic license."

She then told me that she had been mad at the ward where I was serving; that they didn't appreciate the sacrifice that was being made in their area; that she felt really bad for me when she read about the sorry meal we had eaten.

Unfortunately for my mom and myself, she believed most of what I told her until I was 25. That is when she decided that most of what came out of my mouth was a lie. And that's when she decided (for her own sanity, and who can blame her) that she could no longer believe me.

So. There you have it. An example of Stephanie, the Liar!

I know I usually add a video of the song that inspired the post, but Deana Carter's "Liar" is not available. Boo! Just go and listen at your favorite digital music outlet. :)