Honesty...Don't Believe The Hype

Everybody Loves Raymond fans might recognize the title of this post, and while I’m sure I will harp to my future kids that honesty is always the best policy, good ol’ Ray Barone may have been on to something there. For example, I once read that if you were to ever get pulled over by a cop for speeding that fessing up to your transgression was the best way to go. I tried this approach the last time I got stopped, and it got me nowhere fast. Was there a reason you were going so fast, sir? “No, not really, sir…I will try to slow down next time.” Now, 1 occurrence is a pretty small sample size. The cop may have been a complete d*** in general, or he needed to meet his quota for the month, or there could have been a dozen other reasons why I wouldn’t have escaped without a ticket with that particular guy at that exact moment, but no matter how you slice it honesty didn’t pay off for me in that instance. If it happened again, I would have just played dumb. Do you know how fast you were going, sir? “55, why is anything wrong?” The speed limit’s 40 miles per hour here, sir. “Oh, well I thought it was 55. Look, that sign up ahead says 55 mph. I didn’t realize that it was only 40 back there. Oh, whoa is me…” You get the idea.

"Sorry, officer...I didn't know I couldn't do that."

Put in another situation of that kind this past weekend, I decided to go the other way. Playing basketball with Krissy, Mac, and others at Notre Dame of Maryland in Towson, we were stopped by a middle aged gentleman who inquired about our student status (we know people who go there, which is why we know about the gym in the 1st place, but none of the people playing at the time had any affiliation with the school). The guy was perfectly nice, well dressed, handsome, etc…he had the look of a guy who had just finished playing golf and was about to take the wife out on the boat that evening. He may very well have been the assistant band director for all I know, but he had a college president/dean/administrator look about him. Do you go to school here? “Yes, sir.” Which school? “Pharmacy.” Ahhh yes, might I ask you who the dean of the school of pharmacy is? “I’m sorry, I can’t think of the name. Sorry, I am a 1st year student. It’s right on the tip of my tongue though.” That’s ok. Can I see your student ID? “Well, I don’t have it on me actually. I left it in my car. Do you want me to run and get it real quick?” No, that’s ok as long as you’re telling me the truth. You wouldn’t lie to me, would you? “No, sir. Is there a team practice we need to leave the court for or anything?” [Giving myself bonus points for this response; my body language and response must have been convincing enough, but my own question might have redirected the focus of the interrogation just long enough to throw Dr. Dean Fancypants off the scent…] No, nothing scheduled for a few more hours. We just sometimes have people sneak into the building to use the gym. It’s for students, faculty, and staff members only, and we just need to make sure. “Oh, ok. I completely understand, sir.” Just make sure you guys have your IDs next time. Have fun. “Thank you, sir. Have a good one.”

Jiminy Cricket can go b*** himself.

I don’t consider myself a particularly good liar, but that seemed to get the job done. I found myself on the other side of this conversation quite a bit back at UMBC, where part of my job was the de facto head of security for the school gym. Early on, I probably left the occasional "sneaky-sneaker" to his own devices if he gave me the ol’ I forgot my ID line, but as time went on that changed. Eventually, trespassers had gotten so brazen that I wouldn’t have been clearly as nice as "Old Man ND" was to me. You go to school here? Yea? No ID? Hit the bricks! In fact, what started out as guilt eventually turned to glee whenever I got the chance to kick someone out of the gym. But in this instance for us, it all worked out. A little halfcourt basketball game never hurt anybody…which shows that in certain situations a smidge of dishonesty isn’t so bad after all.