I told my first fib in Sunday school at age five. I had ignored the teacher and when she scolded me for not listening, I answered meekly that I was hard of hearing. My poor Sunday school teacher was moved with remorse and sympathy toward her disabled student, and afforded me special attention to make up for my disadvantage. Unfortunately, this idyllic state of affairs ended two weeks later in Bonwit Teller where my teacher met my mother and asked her what was being done about my hearing problem.

My grade school friend, Neil, was fascinated by the very strange old lady who once lived in our house and honeycombed it with peepholes. They had all been sealed except for the one which looked into my older sister's bathroom. Neil never came to my house without furtively inspecting the walls near that room. When after two years, I finally confessed the truth, our friendship ended, since Neil had no sense of humor.

I heard many lectures of the evils of making up stories and many renditions of that children's classic, The Boy Who Cried Wolf. These warnings did not prevent me from telling Todd about my maternal grandmother who played contrabassoon for the Philadelphia Orchestra or Amy about my pet parakeet, Louise, whose eggs we ate regularly for breakfast.

Junior High marked the creation of my greatest fib, my dear, beloved, and nonexistent sister, Adalgisa, named after the Druid temple virgin in Bellini's opera Norma. She attended Oberlin College where she studied art-anthropology and fell in love with the French art historian Thierry de Beauharnais, a direct descendant of Josephine, Empress of France. They lived in France where they researched the Neanderthal paintings in the Lascaux caves. When Adalgisa became bored with Thierry she ran away to the Antarctic with Haakon Lagerlof, a Swedish ornithologist. Together, they studied the migratory patterns of Emperor penguins on the Ross Ice Shelf. Mrs. Kaplan, the woman who used to carpool to tennis clinic, still inquires about Adalgisa's health whenever I see her and is amazed that she has yet to catch a cold in the Antarctic.

After Adalgisa, I resolved never to fib again, but last summer at the University of Pennsylvania, while I listened to some students whine about their awful parents, the uncontrollable, creative impulse overwhelmed me, and off I went. I never see my parents, I told them. My mom, an archeologist, is always on digs in the Yucatan Peninsula; my dad does research on acid rain for the Canadian government in a lakeside cabin in Northern Ontario. I have to stay home with my evil guardian, Mrs. Crumbschurtz, a free-lance artist, who designs the decorations on Dixie paper cups. She is so mean that I am allowed out once every three weeks. These kids were aghast, and they invited me to live with them. That night my resident teaching assistant told me that if I wanted to discuss any personal or family problems, his door was always open.

Why do I make up these stories? My favorite English teacher once offered an explanation that appeals to me. According to her, storytelling is the first step to literature. The hallmark of any literay person is, therefore, an interest in stories. In any case, I no longer fib to people; I save my stories for my writing, and I would never lie about important things like college applications...honest.