As I’ve gotten older, I’ve discovered something new about myself: I am a liar. However, my lying isn’t out of a need to make myself sound cool or deceive others—I’ve long since given up on that possibility. My lying is a symptom of me being a lazy fuck. Usually I don’t feel like explaining the details of a situation, so I just take a shortcut. An example was the other day when a new acquaintance asked if I smoke. I said “no.” Another friend was standing next to me and immediately called me out, saying, “You totally smoke. Why did you just lie?” And this required me to do what I’d been attempting to avoid. I had to explain that usually when people ask if you smoke, they want a cigarette or want to go have one together. Since I am an occasional, mostly social smoker, I didn’t have cigarettes on me. Also, I didn’t feel like sharing a cigarette if this person did have them. But instead of just allowing me to say “no,” my asshole friend made me explain the boring answer anyway.

The problem with lying out of laziness is that when you get caught, you’re the asshole, even though you were being polite in trying to save your audience from a boring, inconsequential story. This very thing occurred the other day when I had made plans to go out with a friend, James. I told another friend, Alex, about my plans. The next day, Alex asked how my night with James was. Even though my plans changed and I ended up spending time with a different friend, I simply responded, “good.” Later on, Alex found out that I hadn’t spent the previous evening with James. “Why did you lie about that? Why did you think I would care?” he asked. But the thing was, I was trying to spare him from a boring story about how the evening got too complicated and I ended up meeting up with… blah, blah, blah. You’ve probably stopped reading by now because this is a boring story. And that’s what lying is good for—avoiding boring-ass stories. However, some people really do look the gift horse in the mouth and ruin it for all of us.