[legion]

My father was a pathological liar. He claimed to have a Masters from U of I and a PhD from University of Chicago. I've since discovered that both are were lies. He claimed to do government work, know lots of celebrities and so on. All lies.

A high school friend that I ended up going to college with was a major pathological liar too. She once called me up and told me that she was scared of a male friend of ours and that she needed me to talk to him for her. I called the guy up and he started laughing. She had called him and told him the same thing about me.

When I started dating my now-wife, she started spreading rumors amongst our friends that I was a coke-head (never touched the stuff) and that my wife was trying to get pregnant by me. (This was a week or two into our dating and we hadn't even done the deed yet.) When I called her on it, she moved to Colorado--that day--and I never heard from her again.

My take is that pathological liars don't really like their lives and like to invent problems to make their lives more exciting and to attract the attention to them that they so desperately seek. In high school, I noticed that I had a propensity to lie for these same reasons. Being the introspective fellow that I am, I resolved to stop. I didn't like the feeling of getting caught lying.