Prolougue
“To be honest, I think that you are ugly, Martha is an addict, Lance hates his children, Leo is just plain stupid, and all of you are deluding yourself. I say this not out of unkindness, but because I feel the truth must be heard.”
His declaration was met with a gasp, two denials, and a collapse into tears.
That was the last time Andy was welcome in the William James Psychiatric Office’s waiting room. From then on they asked him to arrive on time, and to proceed directly to see Mr. James.
To all appearances, he was a pretty normal kid. Andy was twelve years old, with light brown hair, blue eyes, and a slightly deformed nose (high speed collisions between baseballs and noses rarely result in a loss by the ball). His parents loved him, but they desperately wanted him to be normal. At the dinner table, Andy would talk about his day. It wasn’t that he didn’t do normal things. He went to school everyday, brought home above average grades, studied for tests, and played sports at recess. The times that made his parents wonder was once he had finished talking about the school day. He would speak of the people he had offended that day. Of course, Andy didn’t think he was offending anyone, he just saw it as being truthful.
In retrospect, this may have been his father’s fault. In fact, it was most definitely his father’s fault. Andy’s father, a world renowned figure in the study of psychology, had wondered if it was possible to raise a child in such a way as to make him totally honest. He had decided on everything from the color of the room, to what television programs his son had seen in his early years of development, and it had worked. As far as his father could tell, Andy was the world’s most singularly honest person. In the eyes of Andy, telling a lie was not merely hiding the truth, it was destroying it.
This was excellent for his father’s career, but it did slightly more to Andy then his father had expected. He had not set out to raise a child incapable of lying, just one set against doing so. Sadly for him, the former was the result. Andy was an extremely intelligent child, but he simply did not see how any situation could justify a perversion of pure truthfulness. When he was asked for his opinion, he gave it. This was how the trouble in the waiting room started that day.
After school each day, Andy walked to his father’s office, and would wait quietly in the waiting room until his father was done with the day’s paperwork. He was contented to listen to the people there. They thought it was wonderful to have another listener to their tales of woe, so he was welcome there as long as he was quiet. This went on for a good few months. He was only there for about fifteen minutes, so he didn’t mind keeping to himself. Then, one day, an older gentleman named Jake asked: “So what are your thoughts about all of this, Andy?”
“To be honest, I think that you are ugly, Martha is an addict, Lance hates his children, Leo is just plain stupid, and all of you are deluding yourself. I say this not out of unkindness, but because I feel the truth must be heard.”
His declaration was met with a gasp, two denials, and a collapse into tears.
That was the last time Andy was welcome in the William James Psychiatric Office’s waiting room. From then on they asked him to arrive on time, and to proceed directly to see Mr. James.
To all appearances, he was a pretty normal kid. Andy was twelve years old, with light brown hair, blue eyes, and a slightly deformed nose (high speed collisions between baseballs and noses rarely result in a loss by the ball). His parents loved him, but they desperately wanted him to be normal. At the dinner table, Andy would talk about his day. It wasn’t that he didn’t do normal things. He went to school everyday, brought home above average grades, studied for tests, and played sports at recess. The times that made his parents wonder was once he had finished talking about the school day. He would speak of the people he had offended that day. Of course, Andy didn’t think he was offending anyone, he just saw it as being truthful.
In retrospect, this may have been his father’s fault. In fact, it was most definitely his father’s fault. Andy’s father, a world renowned figure in the study of psychology, had wondered if it was possible to raise a child in such a way as to make him totally honest. He had decided on everything from the color of the room, to what television programs his son had seen in his early years of development, and it had worked. As far as his father could tell, Andy was the world’s most singularly honest person. In the eyes of Andy, telling a lie was not merely hiding the truth, it was destroying it.
This was excellent for his father’s career, but it did slightly more to Andy then his father had expected. He had not set out to raise a child incapable of lying, just one set against doing so. Sadly for him, the former was the result. Andy was an extremely intelligent child, but he simply did not see how any situation could justify a perversion of pure truthfulness. When he was asked for his opinion, he gave it. This was how the trouble in the waiting room started that day.
After school each day, Andy walked to his father’s office, and would wait quietly in the waiting room until his father was done with the day’s paperwork. He was contented to listen to the people there. They thought it was wonderful to have another listener to their tales of woe, so he was welcome there as long as he was quiet. This went on for a good few months. He was only there for about fifteen minutes, so he didn’t mind keeping to himself. Then, one day, an older gentleman named Jake asked: “So what are your thoughts about all of this, Andy?”
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