the liars' club

My Dad has long been a teller of tall tales, a bullshitter, master of everything, a braggart. A liar. I was taken in by his lies for way too long, I was pitifully naive. A guy I dated briefly in college saw right through him and wrote a short story (a good one too) about him and I still didn't see him for what he was. It's pathetic really. But once I finally realized just what my Dad was, after college and too many dinners of my Dad getting drunk and loud, pushing booze on me, I wasn't going to be fooled again. I became repulsed by people who deceive with exaggeration and self-promotion, like it makes me want flay them, or at the very least, call them out for being the phonies they are. It's breaks my heart that Dad was insecure enough about himself that he had to adopt this flimsy persona, where he really felt people might think better of him if he was the best at everything. It's so immature, but my Dad isn't dumb and I just wonder what made him hurt so profoundly at such a young age that he had to inure himself against, well life. I tend to be honest to a fault (I was a superintendent at an apartment building once and felt compelled to tell prospective tenants about the recent problem we'd had with flies that made the house look like we were going through the black plague) but it's not like insecurity has escaped me. I've lied too. Usually to spare someone's feelings, most often when my husband asks me what I've had for dinner and I don't want him to scowl at me for either skipping dinner or eating four donuts or some other horrible quantity of junk food and calling it a meal.