Here it is, right from Wednesday morning's FirstNews: Researchers say everyone lies. There are two types of lies, these experts say. Lies to protect other's feelings and lies to protect our own self-image. Did we really need a research study to know that stuff? I'm a father of four. I know about lies.

Now, I know you're thinking "Well, Joel, if your kids are fibbing, maybe they learned that from you!?!" Honestly, there are a multitude of my behaviors our kids should not emulate. However, I have always tried to be up front with them. For example, when Taylor was in Middle School he broke his arm while skateboarding. In the emergency room, the doctor and nurses had to realign things a little bit. They gave him pain-killer but it didn't really take. He tried to tell them that but they were doubtful about his perspective on the matter. I could tell he was telling the truth. Taylor was asking everyone around him "Is this going to hurt?" In their well-intentioned answers, the conscientious ER staff told him "No...not much at all." Taylor looked up at me and asked "Is this going to hurt?" Here was my answer "Yes. It is going to hurt quite a bit." Well, they straightened his arm and it hurt...quite a bit. Ever since, Taylor figures I'll tell him the truth.

Speaking of broken arms and tall tales, our oldest son, Alex, when he was about four, took a pretty tough tackle from another kid in the neighborhood. He immediately claimed his arm was broken. It wasn't. But he insisted. He found a dish towel and wrapped it around his "injury." He walked around with that thing for a couple days. There was no swelling. There was no bruising. He could move it freely when he thought nobody was watching. Was that really lying? Or, was he just being a kid? Of course, now that he's in college, when you ask him to take out the garbage or make the bed or do the dishes, he occasionally claims that his arm is bothering him. He has to be reminded that he never actually broke it. Maybe he was just laying the foundation for future ways of avoiding chores! Diabolical! Truthfully, during that "broken arm" period so many years back, Tully, a fuzzy resident of Sesame Street, also had a broken arm...or whatever a Muppet appendage is called...on the show. We think Alex may have been imitating Tully. Later we found him sitting on a lily-pad catching flies on his tongue. He was crazy about Kermit, at that point.

I don't want to be too hard on the kids, it just seemed like we had a bunch of years when none of them ever took responsibility for anything. Lights left on. TV too loud. Crayon marks on the walls. Mud on the carpet. Aardvark in the VCR. Nobody would admit anything. Finally, I started to say "So, did our invisible fifth child do (insert infraction here)?" That was a mistake on my part. The kids named their new sibling "Toby" and he became the go-to-guy for all dilemmas. "No, Dad, I didn't spill grape juice on the sofa...must have been Toby!" "No, it wasn't me. I think Toby left the bikes outside all night." "The garbage? I told Toby you wanted that done! Oh, that Toby is such a bum!" I tried to claim "Toby" on my taxes that year. The IRS did not think that was funny. I told them it had been Toby's idea.

I think the kids were being mini-theologians to a certain degree. Well, selective mini-theologians. In the Bible, the Book of Proverbs says "A lie is an abomination unto the Lord and a very present help in trouble." Our children focused on the second part of that admonition and warped the truth whenever they were in "trouble" in the "present." Forget Burger King, for awhile it seemed like our place was the true Home Of The Whopper!

Fib. Fish-tale. Fabrication. Terminological inexactitude. Linguistic liquidity. Corker. Weather forecast. They all refer to some sort of inaccuracy. Hey! Who put that last one on the list? "Weather forecast" does, however, remind me of another finding in the research. The study indicated that most of us lie at least once to 38-percent of the people we meet. That number is considerably higher if you do weather on TV. In fact, that's why, at graduation from Weather-Dork School, we are given something special, in addition to a certificate indicating good use of crayons on maps, a thesaurus and collection of wacky ties. Just as a precaution, in case the old rhyme:

Liar.
Liar.
Pants On Fire!

is true, we get a supply of asbestos underwear.

I'm wearing them right now.

No lie.