Get to Know Me

Can You Find the Lies?

You know that game popular for groups as an icebreaker activity where you provide three statements, two true & one false, and the group members guess which one is the lie?

I’ve participated in this Icebreaker many times at teacher in-services or small group meetings.

By way of introduction . . .

Wait, I’ve been on Substack almost two years now, so this is not exactly an introduction.

Maybe this is better as a Get-to-Know-Me post for those new to my Stories With Shell publication. People like to know a little about the authors they’re reading, right?

Let’s play.

Here are my three statements:

a. In 2^nd grade, I enjoyed reading aloud to my class any chance I got.

b. In 5^th grade, I beat up a boy on the playground.

c. At 11 years old, a few friends & I slept on a bridge outside all night.

[Answers will follow in a minute, but you might think this one’s easy if you have read my bio blurb. I mean, I was a HS Lit teacher after all. 😉 ]

---

☕By the way, we former teachers still love coffee & that nectar inspires some creative juices. In case you ever feel like contributing, someone created this website at the button below.

---

While I love playing this game and fooling the people around me, because I usually do fool the players, I have a thing about lies.

I remember from early Bible studies memorizing the fact that “lying is an abomination.”

Such truth in that declaration, for we all know the havoc lies have caused in certain situations. Not to mention how you must tell more lies to cover for the first one.

I’m not sure why lying has always seemed so significant to me. So profound that a mental block stops me in my tracks when the temptation arises.

Perhaps it’s because I was lied to as a child . . . even though I was not fully conscious of the deception.

It’s like I felt it there, sleeping under a heavy blanket.

Fast-forward to my life in recent years where I have held in a secret for years, tamping it down whenever it raises its threatening little head. No wonder I was sick.

Once, I tell a bit of my story to new friends, I usually get a statement something like, “Oh, looking at you, I never would have guessed that about your background.”

As if you can guess someone’s past by looking at her. (Well maybe some people can). My dad used to say things like, “Looks like he’s been around the block a few times,” or “She’s been through the ringer” when judging a person we brought home to meet the parents.

Q. Which of my statements above, a, b, or c do you think is the lie?

A. The answer is a.

I absolutely hated reading aloud all through grade school. At some point in HS under the tutelage of an excellent English teacher, I slowly began to enjoy it.

And now? I love it.

That means I did, in fact, beat up a boy who attacked me violently on the playground & nearly broke my legs. I was a scrawny little waif who got lucky and tapped into some strength no one guessed I had to grab his leg, throw him off balance and shove him across a rocky pit of gravel that messed up his back pretty good and made him stop kicking me. He looked a lot worse than I did. It was self-defense obviously. No one got in trouble on either side.

Also, one summer on vacation at a reserve of land in northern Michigan, some friends & I spread out our sleeping bags right on a bridge over a babbling brook and stayed all night. Where were our parents? Ahh . . . hate to say, but they were drinking back at the cabin without a worry in the world about their children out in the elements alone.

That’s how we lived back then.

I guess it toughened us up.

---

Here are three more statements:

a. At 16, I drove home from another country at 2am in a blizzard.

b. I have siblings out in the world whom I have never spoken to.

c. My alcoholic parents eventually, through the help of AA, cleaned up & quit drinking.

Q. Which statement do you think is the lie in this group?

A. The answer is c.

My parents never quit. Even after watching their own siblings die of cirrhosis of the liver, or after my mom suffered from the disease herself.

Unfortunately, my mom couldn’t break up with her one true friend named Corby’s who mixed with 7-Up and wrapped its warm, strong arms around her.

This friend kept her secret like a trusted confidant, and she would never betray such a comrade.

This friend got her so tired one night that when I called her from a Canadian pay phone at a roadside truck stop in the middle of the night, crying because of a white-out blizzard in which I was trying to navigate home, she wondered why I called [Letter a].

I think that same friend had something to do with the truth of Letter b too, but that’s a story for another time.

[ You can read more about some interesting truths uncovered & revealed in my debut book,

🔗 My Father’s Daughter linked here for you.

You won’t just get to know me; you will get to know yourself better too.

GO AHEAD, CHECK OUT THE REVEIWS ON AMAZON. ]

❤️ or Share to help connect more readers & writers 🙂