Introduction

As a person ages, they seem to come to the understanding that if you ask no questions, you get told no lies. Experience will generally lead you to that conclusion sooner or later.

As I was growing up in the post World War 2 society, I was very sternly taught that telling lies was wrong, sinful and will get god mad at you, get you sent to hell for eternity, and even show you up to others as being a deceitful person. Worst of all, it would make your parents disappointed in you, and that was about as bad as it could get.

We, the children of Australia referred to as the baby boomers of the 50s, were taught a rigid but at the same time contradictory set of values that we needed to abide by. This kind of conditioning came about due to an artificial and impossible set of moral rules that the idealistic society that we were born into valued very highly.

Teach the children well

This period of time was long enough after the war that all the returned servicemen, that is parents of baby boomers, had had enough time to be gathered into the flocks of the various religious institutions of the day. They were told that they had to thank god that they were not killed in the war. It seems apparent then that god let a few slip through and die gloriously on the field of battle defending freedom just for balance. But the rest of us should be thankful that the celestial accessory to murder had allowed us to survive a bit longer in this vale of tears and everyone is now required to support their local clergy and church with unflinching faith and devotion and, of course, hand over as much money as possible for the continuation of god’s work.

We received over and over the lessons about what happens if you tell a lie one time which causes all your statements to become questionable. The pivotal story was the “boy who cried wolf” and I certainly got the message about that one and how important it was to be a truthful little boy. No one bothered to explain that this was an imported story because I never heard about any wolves in Australia. However, the teaching was effective and I made a note not to say that I did see one and cry wolf wolf.

The supernatural baby sitter

I was just starting school in the mid 50s so had been given the full indoctrination about god and had unconsciously accepted the installation of the supernatural baby sitter. This was the invisible supervisor who was keeping me under constant surveillance and keeping score that would be used against me later, and once that time came, there would be no appeal or opportunity to defend myself. It would be immediate banishment to the torture pits where the demons would laugh and scream with glee at my suffering because one time when I was 5 years old I told a lie to avoid being punished for breaking mum's potted plant - it was an accident anyway, but I said that the dog knocked it over.

That process was absolutely complete and it made me make sure that I followed the directives of my elders even when they were too busy to bother with looking after me. God, Jesus, Mary, all of the saints, and even a bunch of unnamed guardian angels were always on duty as unpaid child minders and, since the indoctrination was done so thoroughly, could be counted on to jump into my thoughts the moment I felt the temptation to tell any kind of a lie or to be even slightly engage in any "prohibited" activities, you know, the activities so prohibited they can't even be talked about. Shame and guilt just for thoughts shows the lessons were effective.

The exemptions to the unbreakable rules

However, during all of this careful indoctrination to ensure that I was going to be a good boy especially when the lights were off or when no one else was looking, there were exceptions that had been carefully written into the mind programming code. We occasionally got to hear about that “it was only a white lie, and that is okay”. I don’t think that I was ever issued with the description for a white lie and (presumably) a black one. Maybe I was not paying enough attention when that was had been explained to me.

Some lies actually were not only allowed, but promoted as being beneficial and so almost mandatory. Here are some okay and some not okay situations faced throughout my formative years.

The list of OKAY and NOT OKAY - Warning, this gets complicated

• It is NOT okay to hide from your mother that you kept a couple of pennies out of the change when you got back from a shopping errand.

• It IS okay to lie when you tell your mother that you liked the dinner even when she put boiled cabbage on your plate and you had not only to eat it but you had to show a happy face and be thankful for everything you were given.

• It is NOT okay to sneak a look at your sister in the bath because such thoughts are disgusting, dirty, sinful, and made Jesus cry.

• It IS okay to pretend that you didn’t even notice that you have a dick and that your sister doesn’t – and for sure it is NOT okay to talk about it to anyone.

Notes if you get something special: It IS both okay and NOT okay to interrupt your teacher in grade three and ask what time it is so that you can adjust the wrist watch that you are so proud of. Actually all you want is to draw attention so that all the other kids in the class can know that you are the possessor of a state of the art time piece (which was actually second hand, didn’t keep accurate time, and so was handed off to the kid to make him feel special for a while).

• It IS okay to say your prayers at bedtime and even better if said loud enough so that your mother can hear, even though you have no idea what the words mean. Even if mum didn’t hear it, god did hear it and he liked it as much as mum that a young kid is parroting off words that he doesn’t understand, so clearly this was a worthwhile thing to do.

• It is NOT okay to touch your wee wee even if it got itchy. That is a dirty thing and not to be touched, especially when outside the house where someone might see.

• It IS okay to smile at the teacher and try to get her to put in a nice comment on the end of term report card that mum would be happy about and maybe even reward me in some way.

• It is NOT okay to tell grandma that the sweater that she had hand knitted with her arthritic fingers over many months not only didn’t fit well, the color was terrible, it had holes in it, and one sleeve was shorter than the other - even though all of that was true.

• It IS okay to tell grandma that the sweater that she hand knitted with her arthritic fingers over many months was absolutely beautiful, fitted perfectly, and was exactly what you were hoping you would get for your birthday – even though none of that was true.

• It is NOT okay to drink the left over beer in people’s glasses at family gatherings when they got up to go into the other room.

• It IS okay to drink half a glass of daddy’s beer when he is relaxing after a hard day’s work when all he really wanted is for the children to go to sleep early.

• It IS okay to sit quietly and listen to the minister tell of the bible stories at Sunday school and for us to later be able to retell the stories reasonably accurately.

• It is NOT okay to point out how farfetched the stories sounded and certainly not okay to point out that the that the minister is wearing dirty sand shoes and that his breath smelled terrible when he came close and gave us that sincere hand shake at the end of the lessons.

• It IS okay to look angelic when dressed up in Sunday best and show that we can sit quietly at church services.

• It is NOT okay to pick your nose in church services. It is also not okay to scratch your crotch in church services no matter how itchy it gets.

• It IS okay to not go to school and just go and play and swim down on the river bank for the entire day and then go home as if everything was normal.

• It is NOT okay to get caught not going to school and just going to play and swim down on the river bank for the entire day instead.

• It IS okay to drive your Vespa motor scooter on the roads before you get your driver’s license and as long as you don’t raise any attention to yourself you don’t make any trouble.

• It is NOT okay to drive your Vespa motor scooter on the roads without a driver’s license and the police man fined me $10 and that really hurt (my salary was just $12.85 per week).

• It IS okay to find a nice girl and develop a wholesome relationship with her and to decide that you want to settle down with her and get married, have babies, and build a home that would cost so much that you would be in debt for the rest of your life.

• It is NOT okay to admit that you are frustrated as hell and you just cannot see anything further down the line than marrying this girl with the great body so that both her family and your family will enthusiastically approve of you having sex with her as often as you want for as long as you can... oh yeah, oh yeah, world without end, amen.

• It IS okay to tell your wife that you love her with a special and spiritual love that transcends any superficial physical attraction (the things that got you interested in her in the first place but now you pretend were of no interest to you at all).

• It is NOT okay to tell your wife that you notice that her breasts and buttocks seem to be succumbing to the forces of gravity, her thighs and upper arms are now considerably chunkier, and that the fresh and youthful body that she walked down the aisle with seems to have been lost somewhere between “Great news honey, I’m pregnant,” and “I need you to pick up the kids from school.”

Epilogue

Clearly it was a complicated process growing up as a baby boomer in the 50s and 60s in Australia, but finally the moral of the story is that is never okay to tell a lie except when it is okay and sometimes it is essential to lie sincerely to ensure you end up with acceptable results.

And that's the TRUTH!