The Lying Game

Although I rarely get to engage in intellectual conversations with guests or co-workers while working on the retail floor, I do get to engage in selling tactics that allow my creative juices to flow. Namely, lying.

It's simple. At least that's what T says. Aeriale, she says with a straight face, you're only telling white lies. I mean, they don't even count as lies. And then she goes on to tell me about how her husband cheated on her last week. She's one-of-a-kind, that T.

So, I try my hand at it and find that it comes too easily for comfort. I start small. I walk over to the lady with the spit-bubble boy on her hip as she browses the nostalgic lotions and creams. Smiling wide, I tell her that my grandma used to use this stuff as a kid (truth), and that she comes into RH all the time to see what's new because she swears by her childhood pain liniment and doesn't use new age meds at all! So, see, this stuff really works!

The woman smiles back and burps the baby that has moved up her shoulder and picks up some white cream that, supposedly, my grandmother still uses because she's basically a hippie who has sworn off modern medicine.

Start small, lie big.

T watches the whole shindig and gives me a Barbie -nod. I mean, I'm no liar, but I am a fiction writer...which is kind of the same thing, you know? Speaking lies for selling tactics versus writing lies for entertainment. Close enough.

After the first couple of lies, it seems that every encounter calls for an elaborate story about how my own mother grew up on a farm in Kentucky, shooting wild game with a bow and arrow, growing her own asparagus and winning first place in the annual Baskerville County Asparagus Festival! Where, you ask, is Baskerville, KY? Well, how about I get you a basket to fill up with crap you don't need and don't want, and I'll tell you about the time my grandfather blew up a dog just to feed the family for three days!

Half the guests at RH think my family is the most hillbilly, most fascinating unit since the creepy people down the road got caught for filming porn in their place of employment. The other half of the RH guests are buying nostalgic candy and cutesy salt and pepper shakers and sock monkeys for kids they don't have because of the word vomit that keeps coming out of my mouth.

Let's be realistic here, though. Sales aren't that good. And I'm not that good of a liar. People just believe anything. Honestly.

And it's kind of fun to tell people about the time myself and two buddies hitchhiked our way out of the Egyptian desert with a van full of Pakistanis and a greasy-haired monkey of a driver with bleeding hands and a wish for all of us to come back to his hut and be concubines.

TRUE STORY.