Honest, it’s easier to tell the truth

PAV’S PATCH:
THE competitive streak in humans is a strange thing.

Most of the time it manifests itself in trying to prove you’re better than the person next to you. Then again, a lot of others will try to show that they are worse. And in the majority of cases we’re dealing in tall tales.

Why do we make up stories to somehow score points? Why don’t we simply tell the truth and let others judge us on our own merits?

Many years ago, I used to know a couple of sisters. Their mother — a dyed-in-the-wool Conservative — was very proud of them, not least their supposed penchant for straight-talking.

“Do you know,” she once told me, “the Labour candidate was round here the other day and our Julie packed him off with a right flea in his ear.”

Julie had apparently asked the man if he thought it right that his leader — then Michael Foot, an atheist — should be able to pick the Archbishop of Canterbury if he were prime minister.

Now, to be fair to Michael, I’m sure it’s not a power he would have wanted and he would probably have let Parliament decide.

Anyway, I took mum at face value but when I later spoke to the girls they told me that far from answering the door and arguing with the canvasser they had taken fright, fled upstairs and hidden in their bedroom. Why did mum make up the story?

Similar thing with a friend of mine. He told me the other week that his son had found a book and said it was the best thing about Edward I he had ever read.

“You telling me your Bill’s read more than one book on Edward I?”, I replied. “What is he, a professor at Oxford?” “Oh he’s read a few,” said my friend earnestly.

But his son later let me know that he’d found the book in a discount store and it was the only one he had ever read.

But the son is hardly guilt-free. He might ask me what sort of shampoo I use. I’ll say that I got such-and-such because it was on offer and he’ll always retort: “Never touch it.” And then he’ll think of the cheapest brand and swear that he only uses that.

Another friend accused me of making his orange squash too weak. By the time he’s finished saying “more than that”, his glass was half full of cordial. He pulled a face and then, when he thought I wasn’t looking, added more water.

Did he assume I’d admire him because he drank strong squash?