On lying, part 9 cont'd: the next morning

So the next morning – after all this – I tried to talk to Son 2 as I drove him to school.

Hosea: What does it feel like when you lie or cheat?

Son 2: [silence]

Hosea: Seriously, what does it feel like? Is it good, like ‘Hey, I got what I wanted?’ I mean, if you get away with it …?

Son 2: [after a long silence] Well obviously it doesn’t feel good.

Hosea: Do you mean that it feels "Meh" – bland, indifferent – or that it feels bad?

Son 2: It feels bad.

Hosea: Then why do you do it? I mean, dropping a heavy weight on your toes feels bad, so you don’t do it. Stabbing yourself feels bad, so you don’t do it. Eating chocolate feels good (or tastes good) so you do do it. I get that. But why do something that feels bad?

It was a slow and fairly unsuccessful conversation. He challenged why I should be “interrogating” him, but of course I explained that it’s part of my job as his dad … also that I’m genuinely afraid (as a fellow human being who has to share the planet with him) where this could end up. He explained that he did it because he was “so far behind” in the game – at the time his score was neck-and-neck with Wife’s – and I had to ask, So what? Who cares? It’s only Scrabble, for Pete’s sake! Is trading away your integrity worth that? I admitted that I could think of one or two occasions when it is appropriate to trade away your integrity: for example, if the Gestapo is pounding on your door asking if there are any Jews hiding in the attic, you should say No even if there are. But if the stakes are less than that? If all you stand to lose is a game … or money … or that kind of thing? Those things are trash, they’re a joke, they can’t be taken seriously. Trading your integrity for something like that is a losing proposition any way you look at it.

As an aside: At this point I expect my readers to cock a quizzical (or critical)
eye at me. Just how transparent do I want to pretend we should all
be? Am I even paying attention to what I am saying? Yes, of course I
am aware that my own personal behavior doesn't exactly match what I am telling
Son 2 in the easiest and most obvious way. If you want to be charitable,
you can call my fuller thoughts on the subject "nuanced" or "layered"; another way to describe them might be "self-serving and hypocritical." And actually, I'll get
there in a minute, ... sort of. Let me go on.

He disagreed with my putting money on the list, but I was firm that it belonged there. Beyond a certain threshold level, more money does not mean more happiness; and when you die, as the saying goes, you can’t take it with you. (Whereas I think there is at least a possibility that you can take with you the virtues of a life well-lived. But that’s another conversation.)

I asked him, Do you see us – Wife and me – cheating at things and getting away with it? In other words, I asked him, am I saying one thing and doing another? If yes, then of course my actions – our actions (including Wife's) – speak louder than any words. And if you think I’m being a hypocrite, I added, go ahead and tell me: I won’t punish you for it. Feel free to let me know. Of course this was a dangerous gambit. I don’t know how much he knows about me and D; I suspect he knows a lot more than he’ll ever tell about Wife and her love life. But if that’s the case, I wanted him to say so. If he thought I was being a hypocrite – or blind – let him throw it in my face and I’d deal with it. Better to know exactly how I am setting a bad example (or she is) and answer the charge straight up and honestly than to have him write off everything I’m trying to say here as just words. And while I didn’t know what I would say, I was prepared for the possibility that he might bring up any of the places where either Wife or I have failed to be perfectly transparent. But it was that important.

He didn’t. He finally weasel-worded a statement that he couldn’t speak for what we would do in the future but he wasn’t seeing us cheat today and get away with it. I don’t know if he meant that (so that the weasel-wording was intended to palliate the shame the admission could have caused him) or if that too was a lie (in which case the weasel-wording would have been meant to make it not-quite-so-much of a lie). But that’s what he said. And I did ask him, … why should we send him to boarding school, if this is the kind of person he is choosing to grow into? (I emphasized that he has the possibility to choose differently today, but that it will be a lot harder to choose differently 20 or 30 years from now. As the twig is bent, so grows the tree.)

And he told me he didn’t have an answer for me right now. He wanted to think about it. I asked him to get back to me no later than the drive home tomorrow (Friday), because I know that without a deadline the words “I’ll get back to you” can easily morph into “Never.” I don’t know whether he will have anything to say, or what it will be. And I don’t know what we are going to do about boarding school. By the time I dropped him off at school, I was very troubled.