Know When You're Caught

There's a little-known saying among those who, well, engage in less than honorable activities: "Know when you're caught." You might not hear those exact words, but you'll find the sentiment damn near everywhere. Hollywood loves to play on the "calm criminal who takes a nap in jail" theme, and that's pretty much what the saying means. You've been caught. Guilty. Irrefutable evidence. So, learn to take a lesson from professional liars, thieves, wretch hives of scum and villainy, and know when you're caught.

Ironic, I know. All you ever needed to know you learned in Kindergarten... and from criminals.

For whatever reason (and certainly not by any uncommon means of prescience), I've long subscribed to this philosophy. I, like pretty much everyone else, am not a perfect creature. As such, I'm not a perfectly honest creature and sometimes do stupid shit. Certainly not as often as I used to, but it still happens. Despite what you've just read, I have earned (and maintain) an honest reputation. And in another case of irony, I didn't earn it by being completely honest (although I am for the most part... of course, you'll no longer believe that claim), but by fessing up when I've been caught at something.

Irony is definitely theme here.

Seriously, though. If I were caught, be it in a lie or whatever, and I knew or strongly suspected that I was caught, I'd fess up. There would be no argument, no attempt to backtrack or cover up... nothing. I'd just come clean. Let's face it, despite the imperfect nature of human deduction and induction, accusations usually start flying once reasonable doubt has been surpassed (outside of the topics of love and war, of course). I learned this lesson many, many years ago. And I learned to know when I'm caught.

Why am I ranting about this? Well, I'll tell you. A short while ago, someone was caught doing something wrong (not by me, but I quickly jumped in on the investigation). It was determined very quickly that this person knowingly did something wrong. Irrefutable evidence. And, so, we called him out on it.

He "defended" himself with a lie.

So, we called him out on that. Even pointed out how we knew he was lying.

So he "defended" himself with another lie. Then he even tried to alter the evidence (never mind that we had already taken our own sample of it, safely tucked away for our own reference).

By that point we were done with the matter, having already doled out the punishment (as benign as it was), but still used the incident as fodder for jokes.

But this guy... well, he just doesn't know when he's caught. So he went outside of even our sphere of influence to try to convince uninterested parties that he wasn't lying.

Which made for more jokes. But, as I said, by that point we were done with the matter.

And then he "defended" himself again. And repeated a previous lie.

We're still done with the matter and forever will be, but I just felt the need to share this little moral. Know when you're caught.