Lies

[executioneer]

i'm living a lie

[Colonel Flagg]

I tell the truth nearly all the time, as I'm historically a terrible liar. As a result, I have a tendency to stick my foot in it. A lot.

[LordSappington]

I tend to use the 'I'm okay; everything's fine' lie a lot. I'm too reclusive.

[RaNkeri]

Originally Posted by Tadao

That's a close one! I thought he was talking about me. ;_;

LIES!

[ZeldaQueen]

Remember that girl I told you about? The one who I suspected was moving in on my bf? Yeah, she totally fit that. Over the course of the four or so years I've known her, she's told me or someone in my family:

1.) When she lived in Russia, she was forced to take ballet despite not wanting to (first thing she said, most believable)

2.) She was cast as Gavroche in the Russian production of Les Miserables, only because they apparently forgot to cast the part and she happened to be there visiting a distant relative who was the orchestra conductor. While cast, she was apparently forced to listen to records of dying people to get a better dying scene.

3.) She woke up at four in the morning to make breakfast for herself, mother, and grandmother, walked the dogs, fixed her grandmother's medication, helped her mother translate her medical documents (her mother is a doctor), went to school, and did all of her homework, which leads us to her claim of

4.) That she took every possible available AP and Honors course and found them all incredibly easy. She also seemed totally convinced that it was easy - even common - for people to get 100% on the SATs and that everyone at her lunch table thought so. When I told her I didn't get 100%, she asked if I missed one question.

5.) She used to be a famous model and sent the money back home to her village in Russia. I say "famous" because she told some story about how a friend told her that she had a good face that should be "used" while said friend was flipping through a magazine she modeled for (without the friend recognizing her).

6.) She used to be a famous child star in Russia, so famous that - when smuggling family jewelry out of the country on the trip to America - she got by when the guards recognized her from their child's favorite show.

7.) She was accepted to both Yale and Harvard, but chose to attend Pitt. She was granted a Pitt scholarship which she said paid for all of the classes, got her free room and board, and she then considered asking for the school to provide her with a wardrobe.

8.) She continually insisted that it was out of character for students in books to make fun of their teachers and refused to believe that people had sex for any reason other than reproduction.

9.) She knew an incredibly gorgeous guy in college who she claimed was infatuated with her. I think the guy was real, but I don't know much more about it than that.

10.) After she learned that I loved acting and was trying to get my writing published, she insisted that she had lots of connections to talent scouts and publishing agents who she could hook me up with.

11.) Her dad was the boss of a company so whenever she visited, everyone offered her candy and was nice to her.

I think that's most of it. It got to the point where, every time she opened her mouth, I got the urge to smack my head on a wall. Technically no one could prove the stuff she said wasn't real (although one would think a Google search would bring up some of those famous modeling and acting things) but it was crazy.

[Kitsa]

I wrote a big long thing right now and it probably came off as a bit pissy, but have no fear because someone messaged me on Facebook at the same time and for some reason that completely fucking wiped out everything I was doing in this whole other tab. Fucking facebook.

So I'll try to condense.

- In my experience, teenage Les Mis fangirls are generally some of the giddiest, most exaggeration-prone and generally insane (not in a cutesy good way) people I have ever had to deal with. Everyone's the expert, everyone knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who had something to do with one of the tours, and worst of all everyone's got a damn Eponine number they're ready and willing to pull out at any time. Reported interactions start sounding like guesses at Clue. Phillip Quast at a taco stand in Denver! Michael Ball inflating his tires outside JC Penney!

- In my experience with people who actually work, professionally, in musical theatre, day in and day out, all the bragging stops at the playbill blurbs. People who really do the work are too busy with all the rehearsals, brush-ups, cast meetings, all the extra promo crap like radio shows, dancing in parades, talking to school groups and stuff like that to go around making sure everyone knows how affiliated they are with the show. Kids have it even worse, because they have tutors and dance lessons and long sessions with vocal coaches. The longer the run, the grimmer and more businesslike they get. No one thinks about how romantic Enjolras is. They don't even think about what they're singing. They think about what crap they have to get through immediately after what they're doing and where they're eating afterward. They think about what groceries they're going to shop for or what they need to yell at their kids for when they get home. They'd roll their eyes at anyone with that much buy-in because after the initial excitement of being hired you don't find it in the cast.

There. Now I've got that out of my system.

[LordSappington]

Originally Posted by ZeldaQueen

Remember that girl I told you about? The one who I suspected was moving in on my bf? Yeah, she totally fit that. Over the course of the four or so years I've known her, she's told me or someone in my family:
INSERT A LOT OF STUFF HERE

There was a kid in my Metal Fabrication class who was almost as bad of a compulsive liar as this chick; he insisted that he:
1. Already knew how to weld perfectly, yet never actually welded anything in the class.
2. Learned to make guns from his dad, who was apparently some sort of legendary gunsmith, by the way he said it. Think like the way every fantasy author ever describes how irritatingly perfect elves make their swords, only this guy made guns.
3. Was a senior master in Kung Fu, and would punch and kick the wall to emphasize his point. He eventually broke his fist on the wall, and even the teacher was laughing so hard that he didn't even bother calling the nurse for him.
4. He also insisted that the government made him register his limbs as lethal weapons. I can't tell you how many times I've heard kids say this in my Tae Kwon Do tournaments, but he was the most serious of them all about it.

There's probably some connection between having a shitty childhood, and becoming a compulsive liar as of such.

[ZeldaQueen]

Probably. When my dad saw that girl last, she was in the University of Pitt's medical program but insisted that she never attended classes because they were too boring or something, but he also noted that she looked really tired and frazzled. It just gets weird though, I mean who do they think they have to impress?

@ Kitsa - I got to be a bit of a fangirl after my high school did it, though not to that degree. I did memorize most of the score, but then I was in the chorus so there kind of wasn't a choice there.

[LordSappington]

I think that maybe they feel that they have to hide their crappy past, so they start to make up stuff so that people will think, 'Hey, that person's a pretty cool guy!' or something. From there, they might start to get called out on their lies, so they make up bigger ones, maybe to try and impress more people, and win their respect.
Who knows?

[Kitsa]

I knew a girl in fourth grade who told everyone she was a purple horse. She galloped around the playground and even ate grass, but we all saw right through it.

[DougClayton4231]

LOLOLOL. I always tell my wife that she's going to get me pregnant one of these days. If only that made sense.....

[Dimnos]

Originally Posted by ZeldaQueen

Remember that girl I told you about? The one who I suspected was moving in on my bf? Yeah, she totally fit that. Over the course of the four or so years I've known her, she's told me or someone in my family.

<Bunch of Stuff>

So.... When she was doing all this. When did she have time to hang out with little ole' you? If one of my friends even tried to lie this much I think I would have to punch them in the face.

[Wiffles]

When my shift manager asks me all the time about my absenteeism, I always make excuses like I took my dog to the vet ( i dont even have one) or went to pick someone at the airport rather than say Im tired and feeling lazy. I kinda see it as fair, since Im casually employed. Meaning I dont get paid for sick days and holidays. Not that I want to be permanent in such a job anyway >_>

[MLE]

Originally Posted by Kitsa

I knew a girl in fourth grade who told everyone she was a purple horse. She galloped around the playground and even ate grass, but we all saw right through it.

pffffttthahahahhahahahahahahah

[Kitsa]

One of my old bosses (we were supposed to be co-managers but she muscled her way in) lied her ass off at work. I was simultaneously fascinated by her genius and terrified that she'd frame me for something she did.

It was a piano store, which meant that it wasn't wildly busy and just about dead during the days. All she really had to do was order stock (she couldn't read music, she asked the reps what was popular), forward the credit card receipts to the owner, and submit timecards every 2 weeks. The rest of the time she mainly just hung out in the store and did whatever the hell she wanted, because no one wants to buy a piano in the middle of the day. I had the afternoons and evenings, the busy time with lessons and people who had their partner with them to piano-shop.

So during the days, she basically did nothing. Then doing nothing got boring, and she was in charge of the store's cash, so she started taking cash out of the register to finance snacks from the bakery a few doors down, food from the Chinese place, etc. Then she got a membership to the video store next door under the piano store's name and watched movies all day. She told the owner she was getting cartoons for kids to watch while they were waiting for lessons.

A few months of that, and then she got brave enough to close the store entirely and go on shopping trips with money from the register. Our phone had two lines...she'd put one on forward to the second, and then she'd put the second on hold. I'm not sure exactly how it worked but it made it seem like both lines were busy. Then she'd put a "Be right back" sign on the door, close up, take some cash from the register and go to the mall. Sometimes she'd be getting back just as I arrived.

I was a timid 18-19 year old at the time, and I caught on to what she was doing pretty quickly but didn't know what to do about it. The woman's cousin was the owner's personal secretary, so she got a heads-up whenever the owner was headed our way...never got busted. When I was leaving, on very bad terms with her, I tried to tell the owner what she was doing. He asked me what the hell was wrong with me.

Not long after I moved to a much better (as in, not $5 an hour to sell pianos and babysit kids waiting for music lessons) job, the store closed. I always wonder if she ran it into the ground. I'll never know for sure, but I bet she did. I feel bad until I remember the owner glaring at me and hissing, "What the hell is wrong with you?", or the hundred-odd times I was dicked out of commission on a technicality, and then I become pretty happy about it.

[ZeldaQueen]

Originally Posted by Dimnos

So.... When she was doing all this. When did she have time to hang out with little ole' you? If one of my friends even tried to lie this much I think I would have to punch them in the face.

I'd try to catch her with that, asking her friendly-like "So, how do you balance all of that stuff?" or things like that. Her answer was usually that she found it so incredibly easy that she finished up in jig time. Yes, I did eventually feel the urge to punch her.

I think even worse than the "I'm a total prodigy" routine was how she kept feigning ignorance at American culture (despite the fact that she'd lived here for years). For example, she seemed incredibly shocked when I told her that it was my mother who cooked dinner for the family. When she saw my mom next, she asked her straightaway "Is it true that in an American family, the wife does all of the cooking?" According to my brother she also thought that a "three-way" was a study session with three people.

Kitsa, that must have sucked. That woman deserved to be smacked upside the head.