Good Riddance, No More Lies by Rashaad Lay

Lying is a trait cherished by those who like to take risks whether it is for a particular moment or chronically. They are taking a chance on getting away with a good lie, and also getting caught up in a bad lie. When I was younger, my first instinct was to lie when I got in trouble, and it took many people to tell me, “the truth will set you free,” to evade this bad quality, and now I’m a believer.
I remember the worst lie that I ever told. I was about ten years old, playing with a skateboard in the house, not even thinking of any of the possible occurrences. There I was in the living room, trying to knock over as many blocks as I could with the skateboard. I gave it one hard push sending the skateboard spearing through the pile of blocks, and into the wall. At that instant, the lies started to assemble in my head.
The skateboard left a hole in the wall the size of a quarter. I sat there brainstorming about lies that I could tell my dad, and I realized later on that this only made things worse than they could have been. My dad walked in just as I made my decision on what I was going to say, which was that I slipped on the skateboard while trying to answer the phone. He didn’t believe this one bit, and he grounded me for a month. This gave me more than enough time to think about what I had done considering that I couldn’t do anything. In the end, I promised myself that I would think twice about lying from then on.
People say that the truth will set you free, but I have witnessed that this is not true all the time. Sometimes it just makes things better than if you were to lie. Another thing that I’ve learned from my past is that lying hurts both the liar and also the people who are lied to. I’ve been lied to, and I’ve got to admit it does hurt. Lying frequently makes it less likely for people to believe you. Perhaps this is why I now believe in telling the truth.