To lie is ... humane
Chrissie believes that after her foster mother forced her off the high school basketball team, her life derailed. So for my podcast this week, she’s setting off to ask her foster mother the question that’s been weighing on her for decades: why did you make me quit the team?
Saturday, 1: 10 p. m. I meet Chrissie at the airport and the look of trust on her face troubles me. When meeting new people I’m more comfortable with looks of skepticism. Trust is disconcerting.
2: 55 p. m. We shake hands and, although she is a diminutive woman now in her 90s, her foster mother “Donald Trumps” me through the door frame of her apartment. “What do you do?” she asks.
“I make a podcast called Heavyweight,” I stammer.
“Never heard of it.” And with that, she’s established herself as the Alpha. Which I suppose makes me the Alphagetti – soft, noodley and stringing together letters that form nonsense.
3: 10 p. m. If I’ve learned anything from helping people ask daunting questions, it’s that it’s always best to get it over with. Ask the question. Get the answer. Order a steak when you get back to the hotel.
But it’s hard for Chrissie to just come out and ask the question. And when she finally does, her foster mother tells her that she doesn’t remember the details. After all, she says, it all took place almost 30 years ago. “Probably just thought it was the right thing to do at the time,” she says.
I want to encourage her to offer up some form of regret, but this just isn’t to be. “I’m not sorry for it,” she says when I prompt her. “I must have had a good reason for doing it, so to say I have regrets about it would be a lie.”
I’m puzzled by this. Like most, I can lie upwards of 10,000 times a day. It helps ease the friction of getting through life. People ask how I am, and I say fine. I hold lying to be the greatest gift God has given us. But even with all of our lies and best intentions, we can’t escape hurting each other. I don’t think Chrissie’s foster mother is cruel, but I do think she understands that hurting people and being hurt is the price one pays for being human.
5: 00 p. m. After we leave, I apologize for not being more helpful, but Chrissie tells me that she isn’t disappointed in the way things went. “At least I had the guts to ask the question,” she says. And as for me, at least there lies the dinnertime promise of a t-bone steak, which might be God’s second greatest gift.