I lied to a lot of hairdressers after my sister died.
I never meant to lie. Melissa’s death was sudden and awkwardly made me the oldest child. In the weeks and months (and even years) after she died, I would panic during small talk.
The words came out before I could stop them. My sister used to live in Kalispell.
The words hung in the air.
Maybe not.
I don’t know the polite answer. Imagine if I told the truth.
Imagine if I tried to over-explain.
Alienating.
A few years later, I moved to Washington, D.C. for a job. Meeting new people gave me lots of opportunities to improve my answers.
I still panicked.
Sometimes people asked questions about my siblings, which meant discussing Melissa. How did I deal? By playing dodgeball.
I wasn’t good at dodgeball.
Before she died, Melissa adopted a cat named Snibbles. Melissa made a Facebook page for Snibbles, like all responsible pet owners.
Rolland was my first new friend in D.C. and he noticed I was friends with Snibbles on Facebook.
My parents adopted Snibbles when Melissa died.
Rolland didn’t know I had a sister who died. He didn’t know Snibbles was Melissa’s cat and nobody had access to her Facebook page.
Probably because I lied about it.
I ignored the situation until my birthday. My birthday was two weeks after I moved to D.C.
Rolland was my first new friend.
Should I risk alienating him?
Admitting a lie about my dead sister’s cat seemed like I might return to zero friends.
I tried guessing the password. It couldn’t be that hard.
It was that hard.
Besides being my first new friend, Rolland was also my colleague. He sat next to me in the office every day. It felt really important to know the password because Snibbles was making me look like a dick.
I tried playing dodgeball.
To my delight, Rolland played along.
It felt nice to blame Snibbles.
At some point in our friendship, Rolland learned about my sister and the plane crash that killed her. I did not tell him Snibbles was her cat.
I told Rolland the truth about Snibbles four years later over text message when we no longer lived in the same place or worked together.
It’s probably too late to come clean to the hairdresser.