On lying, part 9: cheating at Scrabble?

It's late. I'm tired. This isn't going to be all thought out or even terribly coherent, probably. But I want to get something on paper (er ... into electrons) tonight while it is fresh.

Wife's birthday. Ironically it was her week to make dinner. Nice dinner, cake afterwards, and then "How about we do something fun together instead of just playing computer games or going to bed? How about Scrabble?"

We get it all out, set up, I go first. We've gone around three or four times, and Son 2 gets a shockingly good score by playing on a triple-word score, but his word includes a blank tile. Wife has already played a blank tile. And I see in my tray that I have a blank tile. But a Scrabble set comes with only two blank tiles. As Maxwell Smart once said when he and the bad guy both turned over aces of spades at the same time, "Either this is a pinochle deck, or one of us is cheating."

It was Son 2. That "blank tile" was really an "L" played face down. We packed in the game. Son 2 brushed his teeth and went to bed. Wife went to bed. Honestly I'll go to bed pretty soon.

But shit! Where did he learn to cheat like that? (A second issue is, Who the hell cheats at Scrabble, of all things? But that's putting the indignation on the wrong point.) It's not the first time, either. I've caught him lying ... not often, but it's happened. His perfect mimicry of emotional affect, which is to say his gift for emotional simulation, makes him a master at emotional dissimulation and manipulation. He can make you believe that he is anyone, and that he is feeling anything. It is scary.

And I start wondering, ... why are we planning to send him to private school next year? OK sure, part of it is to get him out of the way so Wife and I can split up. Part of it, as he told one school in his interview (when the headmaster asked him point-blank if boarding school was his idea or if his parents were just trying to get rid of him), is that, in his words, "I want to escape." Right, got that. And I'd like to help him. And part of it is that I truly believe high school is the time when your heart is most trainable, the time when it is most susceptible to being oriented towards the highest and the best, the time when moral education is most critical. Sure, it's important to train your mind too, but that continues on into university. The thing is, if you aren't a gentleman by the time you enter university, you won't be when you leave either. High school makes gentlemen -- I mean the word in an ethical and gender-neutral sense -- or else cads, scoundrels, or easy-going unresisting mediocrities. And truly, that's the most important part of education, isn't it? If your heart is right, if your character is sound, if you can rely on a well-earned self-respect, then there's always more time later to train your mind more and more. But if your heart is wrong and your character is unsound ... why bother? Honestly then it's better if your mind remains untrained, because I'd rather that the thieves and swindlers in society be too dumb to get away with it.

So what about Son 2? I've seen him lie before, I've seen him manipulate people emotionally, and while I've told him it's wrong I've also told myself afterwards to let it go rather than to obsess about it. I've tried to think of suitable punishments, and sometimes I've succeeded, but maybe all he has learned is that it is wrong to get caught. I can't tell. But someone who will lie about little things, will lie about big ones. I learned that by living with Wife and realizing that I knew all her crazy lying and cheating was there from the beginning. Someone who will cheat at little things, will cheat at big ones. There is no way it will ever just be about Scrabble.

Boarding school ain't cheap, and it's not really clear we can afford it in the first place. If I thought he would walk out a gentleman after four years, though, it would be worth it. But if the battle is already lost and he'll walk out a clever, manipulative liar and cheat -- only better trained and more subtle than he is today -- then what the hell is the point? In that case why even send him? In that case why even fight Wife for custody? Why should I care? Maybe I should just escape, and to hell with them both!

That can't be right. A life spent manipulating others is a life where you can never relate to them as human beings, which means it is a life of profound loneliness. It's a bad life even for the manipulator, to say nothing of the damage he does to others. I love my sons, and I would never want that for either of them. Besides, my job as a father has to be to hang in there.

But something like this really makes me wonder ....