f for Fake

F is for FAKE

The Webster’s New World College Dictionary defines “fake” as follows: 1. to make something seem real, satisfactory, etc. by any sort of deception or tampering; to practice deception by pretending or simulating something  2. fraud; counterfeit.  It is also noted it can be used both as a verb or noun.

The word “fake” is being thrown around a lot currently.  Maybe I should get the most up to date dictionary to see if the definition has been altered or is different now?

I remember as a kid, ice milk was marketed at a cheaper price than ice cream.  My dad had a fit, saying it was “fake” ice cream, and he was enraged that the market would try to dupe him into buying ice milk when he wanted the real thing!  Likewise, my mother had to make cakes and cookies from “scratch” because my dad wasn’t going to eat a cake made from a cake mix that came in a box where the only real ingredients were oil and eggs added, mixed, and thrown in a pan.  (He was not into easy—rather the real thing.)

I also remember learning how to “fake” it in the verb sense of the word by being asked a question in a third grade classroom about geography.  I quickly scanned the stuff all over each wall, saw a world map hanging, and knowing the continents but not the specific countries on each continent, could tell the teacher Tanganyika was in Africa.  (I also had super great eyesight and the map was only one wall away.)  She beamed an approving smile on me, I smiled back, and as soon as she looked away, breathed a huge sigh of relief.  “Faked” my way through another near disaster.

We all fake it from time to time.  Take that report due to your supervisor tomorrow afternoon, for example.  She/he calls you into the office.  Reminds you it is due tomorrow.  Your heart pounds, your palms sweat and you thank your lucky stars you are able to present her/him with a confident smile and a steady voice that says, “Oh, yes!  You will have it!  I’m almost through right now!”  The little voice that speaks inside and can knot your stomach up and make your knees feel like they no longer exist says,”Oh damn!  Forgot all about it!  No sleep tonight!  Oh man, oh man, oh man!”  But the boss sees the smile, hears the confidence in your voice, and says, “Great!  I knew I could count on you!”  You grin, exit, and go straight to the bathroom to hurl from the anxiety attack you just experienced.  That is called faking it.  We all do it.  It can also be labeled a survival skill.  Pull off a good fake job, you survive.  Friends never know, supervisors never know, significant others never know and you come off looking good.  But you know.  THEY don’t live in your heart and your head—you do.  Still, you can console yourself with the cliche/adage—“Fake it till you make it.”

Then one day, when you are more comfortable and feeling pretty secure, you are faking your way through the job, the situation, the questions, and you are challenged, right then, right there on something you claim to know, have done, etc.  Now the cliche “Dead in the water” comes to mind.  You know you have deceived someone on something, been a fraud, counterfeit, tried to make what you said, your actions REAL when they are not.  A colleague, a peer, or even a child, may challenge your knowledge, your actions.  What do you do?

You have been faking it so long, you are beginning to believe your own deceptions.  But the confrontation now forces you to respond.  Well, you can acknowledge that you aren’t sure of what you said or did and honestly say so.  The advantages to this response are the burden is off of you to have to continue the charade and pretense, which can be a wonderful feeling of being unburdened.  Some may deride you for your past actions, but generally, people make allowances when honesty follows their challenge to your behavior.  OR, confrontation can be responded to with anger.

If your choice is to become embarrassed and angry at being caught off guard by a challenge to your deceptions, you go on the offense and attack the person you see as the one who is going to expose you.  You’re human.  No one likes to have to admit they’ve been caught-red-handed.  Now, your self-esteem and ego are on the line.  So you take the offense, return challenge for challenge and friends, supervisors, and significant others may back off, but now a feeling of mistrust has wedged its way into the relationship.  The immediate  question, whether voiced or not, is what else have you pretended, deceived, “faked” in your dealings with me and others?  

My dad liked hot cake on Sunday nights while he was watching television and before he went to bed.  My mother would make a loaf cake, ice half with her frosting, and butter the other half for my dad to enjoy.  The kitchen would smell like German chocolate cake, it would come out of the oven, and before anything else, she would cut a huge piece and slip it on a plate, smear butter on the top, pour a tall glass of cold milk, grab a fork, and serve it to my dad, sitting in his recliner.  He would take the plate, hold it close to his face, breathing in the warmth and aroma of the hot cake, and then take that first bite.  Sometimes, I remember my mother waiting until he put it in his mouth and was savoring it, to tell him she hadn’t had time to get all the ingredients together and so she had to use a boxed cake mix this time.  His jaw would stop the slow motion of eating and tighten as his teeth clenched.  Then she would smile and say, “Not too bad for a mix, is it?”  And I would wait on these rare occasions when she didn’t bake from scratch, to see if he would even finish the first bite and take a second one.  To her credit, she was smart enough to know he could rarely turn down hot cake with butter and she knew if he put it in his mouth, she had a decent chance of pulling it off.  Still, his taste buds could have detected what he deemed a fake cake, so she beat him to the punch with confession and honesty.  Now that is diplomacy and brains.  Had he challenged her, had she become angry and retaliated trying to deny she deceived him, everyone in the house would have suffered.  Who would have won?  Sincerely, I don’t think there would have been a “winner.”  We all would have lost.

My truth insofar as the word “fake” is that it shouldn’t be thrown around easily and in anger.  I have personally found it is much less burdensome to be honest and forthright and not try to carry the weight of faking it on my shoulders as well.  Maybe it is because I respect people that don’t try to deceive me or pretend to be something they are not or know something they do not.  If I believe them, and count on them to know what they are doing, when in fact they have just been faking it, I might wind up in a real mess when I call on their expertise and they have none.  However, if they honestly tell me they don’t know something and have been faking it, I can live with that.  Hey, no one knows everything!  We can work together to rise to the challenge honestly and with integrity in our venture.

My dad wanted the real thing—a cake made from scratch.  But he also wanted the truth.  No one likes to be conned or played for a fool.  My mom never went there.  I’ve had to fake it sometimes—you have, too.  But when it comes down to it,  when push comes to shove, my truth is fakers get caught, so why even go there to start with?  Respect.  Honesty.  And consequently trust in what is real—not fake.

My dad only once decided not to eat the “box cake” and to be honest here, it was a crappy tasting mix.  He never would eat “ice milk.”  And my mother only ate butter, not margarine.  We can pick and choose which fake things we accept.  But isn't the real thing worth more in the long run?  It’s so much simpler and so much more honest in all respects.  Just give me the real thing thank you.   I don’t have to work to figure it out.  That is my truth.