THE WAY THINGS ARE

We all tell the odd white lie to avoid something or someone. No real harm done, like excuses to get out of a thing you don’t want to attend but feel guilty about not going to. Or the cringe gift given with affection you lie about saying you love but you’ll throw away or recycle.

Whoppers though deliberately do harm in the political world or in the workplace or get someone fired. People who write about magic, imagine whoppers about what is impossible within our power as humans. We enjoy these unreal whoppers because we’d love to be able to cast a few spells to meet our individual needs.

If I had such powers I would cast, among others, the Pinocchio Nose Syndrome spell which would activate when people who knowingly tell serious lies to deceive on a large scale launch into their spiel their noses would grow and grow until they’d stop lying. Crooked used car salespeople whose models look great on the outside with bonnets covering faults that become evident after a few trips would find their tongues growing long enough to hit the ground.

The mouths of crooked lawyers who for the right price defend the indefensible, dodging behind smart speech and loopholes in laws, would have their mouths grow so wide, they wouldn’t be able to talk.

In a universal cast, I’d include scammers in general but particularly those who target old folks not savvy to such thievery. Their fingers and nails would curl and grow so long they would not be able to use a mouse, screen or phone for any scam they attempted. Perverts who exposed themselves to children would find their attention-seeking members growing, unable to tuck their crime out of sight, and hide proof of such criminality which would recede once arrested.

Water wasters would be unable to drink, made to understand thirst, the need to conserve. There are people in the workplace willing to lie to cause problems. I’d cast a spell of sleepless nights on them because usually, these selfish types have no conscience about what they do.

A person I worked with tried to foist some of the dull end of her workload onto me because she had seniority, knowing I was already overloaded. When I refused, explaining I didn’t have time, she went out of her way to make my life miserable, complaining to the boss about mistakes by others she laid on me.

Or the ugly guy with business heft and status who sent the prettiest woman in the office pornographic images and suggestive invitations that she ignored until it became so disturbing she couldn’t concentrate on her work and reported him. He and the boss were pals and his lying word taken against hers; she had deleted the unwanted images and emails, no proof; she left. His farewell gift, a threat that with his contacts he would cause her trouble wherever she worked.

The sheer barefaced brazenness to consciously lie about someone or thing to create mischief or fear always amazes me. Donald Trump lands outrageous whoppers on his worshippers that they believe or want to believe. The hideous, destructive weather that hit Republican friendly Florida wasn’t nature under climate change, it was engineered.

I read a novel by the late, wonderfully versatile Michael Chrichton years ago. Not one of his delightful adventures, a more serious book, it dealt with earthquakes that were engineered for political purposes. Maybe the Don or his one of his coterie had also read that one. If conspiracy theories were then what they are now, Chrichton’s early death might have been ascribed to having released information that could have possibility in reality, resulting in the poor man being prematurely bumped off for whistleblowing.

Finally, those with evolving ‘I’m an invincible god’ ego would find their heads growing so big, they’d have to behave or have it explode. In the real world, there is no such magic, just perseverance by those who tell the truth, ignoring intimidation.