Honor Bound

Like most children, I was encouraged to always be truthful and taught that lying was unacceptable behavior. It took a little longer to figure out that what applied to children didn't apply to adults and that there were consequences only if you got caught. If you tell a lie, my mother told me, keep it simple and stick with it. Don't complicate things with a lot of details.

It was a fairly remarkable piece of advice from a woman who claimed to expect me to be honest while assuming that I wouldn't be. The truth can never harm you, my daddy countered, It will always be your friend. The flaw in this unlikely bit of wisdom was exposed early on - I learned to spell my name and proudly painted it on the side of our house - admitting the truth earned me a beating and the rage of both parents.

Mostly, I lied to myself and called it imagination. I was something of a private child, inclined more toward books than friends, and very good at keeping myself entertained. I liked to play alone or with the dogs, making up games and rules as I went along, happy to draw pictures in the coloring books my grandmother provided, or play jacks on the kitchen linoleum. I would often wander off by myself to collect shells or pick water flowers from the ditches, to ride a broom horse through the strawberry patch or explore the abandoned fishing shacks around the Old Road. Cap let me ride the ferry back and forth for free if I stayed out of the way and kept quiet - once I saw a school of whales and never said a word - by six, I was an exceptionally good keeper of secrets. I prized my independence and self sufficiency, treasured the time I spent wandering in a world of make believe with characters I could invent or dismiss with the blink of an eye. I kept as much truth as I could out of my small world, refusing to allow disagreements or quarrels to take hold and writing my own script, always with a happy ending. I was, by all accounts, a quiet and well behaved child, seen and not heard more often than not and rarely any trouble. My innate bashfuness turned to painful shyness and in turn to distance, a trait I still maintain although not always to my own benefit. The plain fact is that I've never quite gotten over preferring my own company to that of most others. When I didn't much like myself, it seemed the safer course to stay hidden - now that I do, I discover it's fragile ground, in need of caretaking and sheltering.

Truth is a long, winding road filled with sudden stops, blind curves and unexpected construction. It's not always pretty scenery or ideal driving conditions but we are bound by honor to follow the rules of the road. The hitchhiker in the rain is a lie - it's tempting if not downright charitable to offer him a ride and most likely he's harmless and not an escaped homicidal maniac - but you never really know where a lie will take you and truth is risky enough.

Stay between the ditches.

Drive with care.

And if given the choice, do the honorable thing.