My first lie

I remember well my first experience of conscious lying. In the second grade, we had drawing lessons. One day the teacher gave homework - drawing on a free theme. Everyone could draw what they like best. I liked space most of all. My favorite toy was a plastic baby doll-cosmonaut in a spacesuit, and an unattainable dream was a sparkling mirror-like moon-rover on batteries.
 
And of course I decided to draw an astronaut. Found a suitable picture in the magazine "Technology - Youth." But the picture was difficult: the astronaut stood there on an unfamiliar planet among the rocks and craters, and the vastness of the starship was behind him. I couldn’t manage to paint such magnificence myself. And I asked my mother to help.
 
I must say, my mother painted just brilliantly. Already as an adult, I looked through her old albums and was amazed at the quality of pencil sketches. Having worked all her life as an engineer, in essence she was an artist. At that time, my mother got carried away, and drew me with a pencil the whole picture - and the astronaut in a spacesuit, and rocks, and a ship. It turned out even better than in the magazine. I circled my mother's drawing with felt-tip pens, colored it with colored pencils and brought it to school the next day.
 
The teacher for some reason decided to check the task right during the lesson. We happily left the desks, covered her desk and began to slip our albums, looking at each other’s drawings along the way. Most of all there were landscapes - forests, meadows, the sun rising above the sea. The teacher nodded approvingly, put fours and watched the following work. When I filed my astronaut, everyone, of course, gasped - he was so good. The teacher did not say anything and gave me a five. Well, what else could I put for my mom's magnificent drawing?
 
And here, immediately after me, Alik Karasev submitted his album. He was the smallest in the class, he studied the worst of all, somehow interrupting from two to three. He drew a fairytale king - in the jabot, in an ermine mantle, with a famously twisted black mustache. It was evident that he, too, took some book drawing as a basis, but unlike me, he redrew it himself as best he could. The king was skosobosobenny, with curved short legs. The crown on his head was dodgy knocked to the side, as it takes from the paratrooper. And yet he was somehow alive — with character, mood, and sly sly eyes in beads. I really liked it, everyone else too.
 
The teacher looked at Alkina king and kindly smiled. And then ... Then she took a fat three on her red pen and put it on it. For me it was a real shock. Why - “three”? Because Karasik has no artist mom? Or because Losers are no longer supposed to? Good after all a drawing! But the teacher has already postponed his album, and put fours for the next series of forests, rivers and fields with haystacks.
 
Karasik calmly took his humiliated king, closed the album and went to the desk. Apparently, he has already come to terms with the fact that he does not have more trios in this school. And I was looking at my astronaut, at the top five with the teacher's sweeping painting. And did not feel any joy. On the contrary, there was a stiff feeling of inner emptiness, frustration. But most importantly, I felt then that I was guilty before Karasik. In front of his wonderful king, in front of his mother, who, probably, does not know how to draw at all ...
 
Abba Dorofei said that it is possible to lie in three ways - by thought, by word and by life itself. Probably, in my case, it was a lie to life - I didn’t try to impersonate who he really was. And I managed to do it, although the teacher probably understood that I did not slip the drawing to her at all as a child. Why did she keep silent then and put this poor five? And why did mom agree to draw a picture for me, knowing that I would pass it on to be evaluated as my own? God knows ...
 
I then saw my own lie clearly and distinctly, through the heartache of the sin I had committed. But what to do next, I did not know. Nor did he know what sin was. And then he lied a great many times. Each time the soul became more and more dead, my children's conscience became less and less sensitive to lies, until finally it stopped reacting to it altogether.
 
When I hear today puzzled questions on the subject “Well, what can seven-year-old children confess to?”, I always want to tell this story about the king and the astronaut. Yes, if I had such an opportunity - to come to confession, I would not just go - I would run at a run, so my soul ached. It still hurts, to be honest. Although then a lot of sins were much more terrible. But this, the very first lie was remembered in a special way, as a conscious transition of the border between light and darkness. And the return from the darkness was long and very difficult.
 

Author: Alexander Tkachenko