Once upon a time (I always wanted to start a Quora story that way), there was a young lady that we’ll call Casey. Casey had a lot of appreciable qualities, and was very witty and had a good sense of humor. Unfortunately, Casey was also a bit insecure, and managed her insecurities with dishonesty.
To tell this story the right way, I need to mention that it all started at my first computer programming job. With respect to college, I was a bit of a late bloomer, and graduated with a Computer Science degree in my early 30s, at which time I was immediately hired by a modest little organization in Pulaski, Tennessee. Casey worked there as well, and rather quickly, we learned that we had a lot in common. We both loved football, though I was mostly interested in college football, whereas she was very passionate about both college and pro, as well as fantasy football. At any given time, she could tell you just about anything you wanted to know about NFL players, past and present, and had a remarkable understanding of the game in general, which is not what I’d call pervasive among her gender in our locale. So yeah, we went out, had a lot of fun, and started dating. The football part is quite relevant, but we need to put that on hold for now.
At work, we had this neat messenger application, useful for communicating with co-workers. Casey was outgoing, and was messenger-friendly with all the guys she worked with. One day, out of the clear blue sky, she walked up and noticed that I was messaging with a female co-worker. It did not go over well, at all. I immediately reminded her that she routinely messaged male co-workers, and that it would be an unacceptable double standard to expect me not to do the same. In hindsight, I think the problem was pretty obvious. The lady I was messaging with didn’t have the few extra pounds that Casey had, and was more accomplished, and arguably a little prettier. Whatever the reason, it was a problem, and I wanted to do what I could to resolve it.
The at-work messenger issue eventually bled over into Yahoo Messenger, and unfortunately, things got ugly and equally petty. Frustrated, Casey finally made the decision that she would prefer to stop using messenger altogether if that’s what it took to keep me from using it. Sure, whatever, so we agreed that we wouldn’t use it, and ceased all messenger activity.
Almost as if on cue, within 3 days, it was brought to my attention that she was using it again. (Raise your hand if you’ve ever dated someone that thought the rules applied to you but not to them.) So, without so much as a conversation about it, I resumed using messenger and struck up a conversation with the aforementioned lady until I was sure that Casey was aware of it. That resulted in a rather fiery confrontation on her part, at which time I called her out on using it after we agreed not to. Of course, she denied it, but quickly backpedaled when I provided proof that I had been keeping in my shirt pocket, metaphorically speaking.
Her next move was to try and restore the agreement to not use messenger (yes, I realize how this sounds), though I saw that one coming as well, and insisted that if we did, we’d exchange Yahoo login info, which would mean that we’d have access to each other’s account (and activity information), which would prevent her from being able to effectively lie about it. Surprisingly, that pretty much solved the problem for a while, at least with messenger-related double standards.
Over the next several months, the lying continued in many other areas, and to absolutely ridiculous proportions. She seemed convinced that a lie is just as good as the truth as long as her statements couldn’t be disproved, and literally operated that way on an ongoing basis.
On no particular day, or for any particular reason, I decided to log in to her Yahoo account, and as expected, she was again engaged in all the messenger activity that she wanted me to agree not to do. I politely asked her what it was all about and if I had misunderstood our agreement. Her explanation was absolutely comical. “I gave my login info to everyone in my Yahoo pool league [billiards] because I’m the only administrator.” Well how about that. Her male co-workers were supposedly sending messages to her Yahoo messenger application, not knowing that they were actually communicating with people they didn’t even know from Casey’s Yahoo pool league. [I’ve heard some paper thin ones before, but that takes the cake.] I said OK, smiled and nodded, and went on, business as usual, and into my shirt pocket that one also went.
You may recall the football part from earlier in the story. Well, here’s the relevance. For the benefit of those who may not be privy to the fantasy leagues, it’s actually a pretty big deal. It takes literally weeks and weeks of choosing players, managing your starters, analyzing performance, player trading, etc., so it is very, very involved, and your team’s results actually do depend on the real-world performance of NFL players. Making it to the championship game in your fantasy league is not just big, it’s huge. One very important detail, is that you choose which of your players will start, and you are required to select them prior to midnight before the next day’s game.
Well not all that long after the Yahoo Messenger episode, Casey’s fantasy football team landed in the championship game. As I mentioned, she was great at all-things-football, and had effectively worked her way up to first place in a fantasy football league of 20+ participants, all of which, other than her, were men. This was a great source of pride for Casey. To kick all the men’s butts at their own game? To her, that was something that money couldn’t buy. She was also very likely to win it all, and was cocky about it. For a solid week before the championship game, she peacocked around the office as if she was the Moses of football. Did I mention that this was… Yahoo Fantasy Football?
I don’t have a clue why I woke up at 11:45 pm that night, nor why it occurred to me to do it. Maybe it was all the expensive dates and dinners I paid for, all the Christmas and birthday gifts I bought for her two children, or maybe it was all the dirty jobs I did around her house. I can tell you for a fact that when someone works for a living and spends their money taking their significant other out every weekend, they don’t typically appreciate being lied to, especially over petty things like messenger conversations. So, I got out of bed, logged on to her Yahoo account, and benched her entire team. Afterward, I literally watched the seconds tick off until the clock struck midnight. The Cinderella championship story was now over, and in its place – a dark version of Pinocchio.
The next morning, well before the game ever started, she called me, absolutely furious, accusing me of benching her team. How did I respond? Poetically, I lied. Further, I mentioned that not only did the 10 or more people in her online pool league have her login info, that they were also apparently messaging with the guys she works with (also in the fantasy football league) so it was probably one of them that was responsible. Of course, she knew that wasn’t what happened, because the pool league story she told me wasn’t true in the first place, and she knew I knew that.
Later that day, her Fantasy team suffered a humiliating defeat. Gone was the cocky attitude, the pride, the bragging rights, and about $200 in prize money. Unfortunately, all I got for my time and effort was a story to tell, and I regret having ever been involved in any of it. But at least the hardest lesson landed in the lap of the liar.