Pathological Liar Day, part two

My priest was in the area today and stopped by to visit me while my fellow crazy people and I were in the throes of Pathological Liar Day. As soon as he passed the security checkpoint and was granted entrance into the ward, people (even some staff members, who had given up maintaining sanity and had joined our Pathological Lying-fest) instantly began confessing all sorts of atrocities to him. After five minutes of it, he tore off his clerical collar (which is probably a serious breach of protocol for him, but what do I care?) and declared, "See! I'm not wearing a collar, so that means I must not be a priest!" He immediately plopped himself onto a sofa and began inhaling brownies (he later ate roughly his weight in pizza) and telling lies with all the rest of us.

Four awards were given for the day's activities. The first three were created and awarded by the staff. One was for the single most outrageous lie. I told a few outragerous lies, but my life has been sheltered up to this point to the extent that I'm thoroughly outclassed here in terms of the background needed to tell a truly outrageous lie. I won't share exactly what lie won the competition because it was of a sexual nature, and this as a PG-rated blog.

Another award went to the most believable and most convincing liar. I won this one. The therapist who unwittingly started the ball rolling on the whole Pathological Liar Day concept would not agree, since she thought I was lying even when I told the truth. I asked everyone not to tell my parents about this award when they show up to pick me up tomorrow for Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant. (By the way, everyone in my ward is either going home or has relatives visiting, so no one has to eat hospital food for thanksgiving dinner.) My parents think they can tell when I'm lying. They can't. I haven't lied to them very often, but when I have done so, more often than not I've succeeded in getting them to believe me.

The third competition would have been part of the second one except that the staff gave out the second award before they knew the machinery was available for the third one. Someone brought in a polygraph machine. We had a competition to see if anyone could beat it. Not one of us could fool it outright, but one other girl and I both had findings of "inconclusive."
We shared this award.

The last competition, which was created by us rather than the staff, was
a game where we listed ten things about us that could be verified by our records or by a phone call to our parents. (We signed a pledge that we wouldn't ask our parents to lie for us. With it being Pathological Liar Day, I'm not sure how much the signed pledge was worth, but it was the best that we could do, as we didn't yet have access to the polygraph.) Each person had to list ten items about himself or herself, with seven being true and three being lies. We had to post our lists on a promethean board and had to face questions from fellow contestants, which by this time would have included staff, because they couldn't resist joining a contest run by crazy people, but we wouldn't allow them to enter because our files had been accessible to basically all of them, so they theoretically had an edge on the rest of us. We let them compete as honorary contestants, and gave out a staff award, but their guesses did not calculate into our final scores. Everyone got to vote on which of each contestant's answers were truth or lies. Each contestant received one point for every lie he or she correctly identified on a peer's form. Additioally, each contestant received ten points for any lie on his or her form on which no more than two people correctly identified as a lie. We designated two girls who really like to text to verify all items on people's lists that anyone found questionable. (In some cases they had to make follow-up phone calls because not all parents answer text messages in a timely manner, but mostly it was handled by texting.) Each contestant got five extra points for any item that was questioned by anyone but found to be correctly designated as truth or lie.

This competition was complicated, but it was worth the trouble since I ended up winning it. For winning this, I had the privilege of deciding from what restaurant to order the pizza. I followed the recommendation of my aunt's best friend's daughter, who attends a local university near here and comes by once or twice a week to visit me. She recommended a local pizza parlor that is a favorite with university students. It was very good pizza, and I'm glad we chose that establishment. I like the idea of giving business to locally owned and operated establishments.


I'm very tired from lying all day. It's exhausting to lie so much! I will probably fall asleep at a decent hour for once. My parents and brother are supposed to be here around noon to pick me up. They'll be here for a few days. If anyone reading this is a thug from near my hometown and knows who I am or who my family is and thinks it might be a good idea to break into my family's home in their absence, I should warn you that my cousin, who is a police officer, is staying at my family's house this weekend, and he has lots of time off, so chances are that he'll be there with his loaded off-duty service revolver in the event that you and/or one of your thug friends tries to burglarize the place.