Call me a liar.

You could say that I am a youngin’. Last year I was in High School analyzing Shakespeare and praying to get all 6’s on my International Baccalaureate Exams. Like Mont, I was taught to dig for deeper meanings in plays, novels, poetry, and essays. The IB program is built around the idea that the students should be delving into great arts and discovering their own opinions based off of their own findings. But the IB program wasn’t the first place where I learned to analyze the world around me. No, I learned to lie first. Yes, I was a child liar. I am surprised my mom didn’t think I was a sociopath or a pathological liar, but I lied about everything. Whether or not I’d brushed my teeth, whether or not I had homework, whether or not I had been buried alive on accident, I would lie about little things like that. Thankfully I grew out of those fabricating years, but from my experiences I had learned my own ways of analyzing the world around me.

Part of telling a good lie is being good at predicting how the individual will react, and changing how you tell the story to suit the individual. Predicting outcomes in a logical way is my way of analyzing the world around me. When I read a new novel, I am constantly trying to predict what will happen next. Each time I get a prediction right I can then backtrack and look at the pieces of the story that led me to that conclusion. Even when I am wrong, I can see the evidence that led to my assumption, and then I look back to see what would have led me to the correct view. I use this with everything I can relate to. With music, as I listen I imagine a story, then I go back and find what made me think of that, and how someone else could have seen this. I enjoy literature, movies, music, art, magazines, television shows, etc. as long as I can build a story through it. I suppose I never truly grew out of lying, I simply transferred the habit to a better outlet, storytelling.

Yeah, I’m a liar. I accept that.