Growing up, I was not a pleasant child. I would often lie. Not big, grandiress lies. I wouldn't tell

other kids that I had superpowers or that my dad worked for Nintendo.

Instead, my lies were sly, underhanded, and full of malice.

It started in preschool when I learned that select words had the power to grant my desires.

I had that toy first. He pushed me. I feel sick. She called me names.

The grown-ups around me soon grew wise to my trickery,

and would give the other children the benefit of the doubt in a dispute.

Instead of this teaching me a valuable lesson about being truthful, it instead taught me that I needed to be smarter.

Clearly, my lies were not believable enough.

At age 5, I pack some berries from a bush and squeeze them into my chin.

The berries came from a bush just outside the school fence and I was able to squeeze

my hand through the bars to pick a few. Clutching just above where I crushed

the berries, I limped towards my teacher who was supervising the playground. I told her that another

boy had threw a rock at me and that it had hit my leg.

When she sent me to see the school nurse I instead went to my backpack.

I took it from the peg and which it hung, romaging through for the plasters I'd stolen from my mother's first

aid that morning. At the end of the day, exiting the school gate, hearing the boy receive a

scolding from his father, put a smile upon my face.

It was clear that I had been believed, and the teacher had informed the boy's father of his

misdeeds.

I skipped past the boy, holding my mother's hand, poking my tongue out at him as he was lumbasted for the act of violence he had supposedly committed.

When we were a distance away from the boy and his father, my mother turned to me.

...