I Don’t Like It When You Lie to Me

Whenever I can, I take each of my four young daughters on an out-of-town trip so we can spend special alone-time together.

When my youngest daughter Mataya was seven, she accompanied me to a speech and we took a train to Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. We had a great time touring and talking about American history, the Liberty Bell, the Declaration of Independence, Abraham Lincoln, and even the first moon walk.

Mataya told me it was the best trip of her life, and I told her it was my best trip, too. She smiled, then looked at me with great earnestness. “Daddy, do you say that to all my sisters?”

You should know Mataya is extraordinarily principled. When she was four, she learned that some of the food she was eating was once a live animal. She decided on the spot to become a vegetarian, and she’s never wavered from that decision.

So her question was like an uppercut to my conscience. I tried to finesse my answer by saying how I really loved every trip with my girls, but that one had really been special.

She wasn’t buying it and nailed me with a family code we use. Whenever one of us wants a positively no-nonsense, truthful answer, we say, “Really, really?” It imposes an absolute obligation on the other person to be totally honest.

She “really-really-ed” me, so I confessed: “Yes, I’ve said that before.”

After a moment, she said, “So you lied to me.”

I tried to weasel out of it by telling her how much I did love our time together, but she stopped me cold with a line that made me proud of her and ashamed of myself: “Next time, just tell me it was one of the best trips of your life. I don’t like it when you lie to me.”