To fully understand my story, you would first have to know just a few things about me. First of all, I have been graced with several good qualities; a brilliant sense of humor, devilish good looks, and the power to wiggle my ears. Sadly, lying is not one of my amazing talents. It may be hard to tell just by looking at me, but I actually am capable of smiling. And when I lie, that smile will not leave my face. Now, the smile could be easy enough to hide; whenever I contract one at school, I only have to prop my head up with my hand covering my mouth. But just a smile was apparently not enough to curse me with. No, my skin gets hot, and I always imagine that it turns bright red. Of course, this may all be my imagination. It seems like nobody ever picks up on my lies. But that could be that they never expect a robot to be able to lie.

Another problem could also be that I do not have any practice. Not that my mother would attest to that. For some reason, she seems fixated on the fact that as a teenager who occasionally gets upset with playing 20 Questions every day will try to lie about everything. A typical afternoon when I am lounging around would go a bit like this:

“Did you do all of your homework?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Are you absolutely sure?”

“Yes, I did all of it that’s due tomorrow.”

“You’d better. I’m taking away that computer if you miss an assignment.”

After all of that preposition, you probably wonder what amazing story I have in store for you. Well, I shall not keep you waiting any longer. What happened w- Actually, there is another thing you should probably know. I run track and cross country. But if you wonder how good I am, think this way. If there was a race between me and a sloth, I might put my money on the sloth. Suicidal tendencies aside, on to the story. A few friends and I (for the safety of everyone involved, they shall remain nameless) had an easy track practice one day. Naturally, we invented something to help us pass the time more quickly. That something happened to be a genius of engineering, the Eighth Wonder of the World, a device that Edison could have only dreamed of and envied- a pen reassembled into a bow. For our arrows, we used the inner parts of a few random pens.

What we did with it should be obvious; we did what any halfway civilized group has done with a new toy. We took turns shooting each other. Well, to be honest, I did not personally fire it. At least, not at the beginning, when everyone else was having fun with it. Most of us lost it for a little while, as the creator decided that he was hungry just after we started running, and left to find a sandwich. We inevitably met up with him again, and this time I tried my hand at shooting the tool. A few misfires later, I got it to work. But some part of me thought that the best place to launch it would be straight up into the air. For my first trick, I made the better of two arrows disappear. For all I know, it may be in orbit to this day. So I did what any two year old would have known to do- I immediately dropped it on the ground. It was only then that I turned around to look at the person who had trusted me with the most amazing thing any of us had seen in the past half an hour. The best way to describe his face would be if he had just seen a litter of puppies die. He asked who had lost it, so I had a choice to make. But how could I- the responsible, dependable, truthful William- possibly admit to having carelessly lost something in less than ten seconds? So I threw the nearest person under the bus.

As you may have guessed (unless you somehow missed the entire first page) he believed me. Did I feel bad about throwing an innocent person to the wolf? A little bit. But to be perfectly honest, the power of lying is exhilarating. Who knew that the ability to change information to suit your own needs instead of leaving it up to the audience to interpret for themselves could be so useful? But again, if you read the first page, you know that I am not a good liar. The friend I accused even said that I was smirking. I considered keeping up the charade for at least a few more minutes, but decided against it, and just admitted it. After realizing it was me that had done wrong, nobody cared anymore. After going home, I replaced my usual casual pondering of the meaning of life for the evening with thoughts of that little toy. My life would continue on and probably nobody in my entire life would ever make any mention of that incident to me again. It still seems to be a sad thought. And for a little while, it felt as if I had somehow learned something from that pen. But then I realized that even if this inanimate object had somehow showed me the selective importance of life dictated by society, it had shown me something far greater. That I have absolutely no career as a politician.