Polygraph.................the LIE detector.

I grew up with fibs. Lies were wicked but little fibs were acceptable. White lies, to spare others’ feelings were also okay.

Like when my aunt was lying reading on her bed, too lazy to go to the phone. ‘Tell her I’m out,’ she would mouth at me in case Suzie the gossip could hear her.

The phone was firmly attached to the wall in the hallway. A special piece of furniture that was called a telephone table was fashionable. There was a place to sit and a raised part, a small table, for the actual telephone instrument with a shelf for the directory underneath.

It was small and neat and was designed to fit into the most humble hallway (also called a wide passage.)
The hard cushion on the chair was pathetic and a teenager usually had to lie on the mat, over which a million dirty shoes had walked in the course of a day in our household. The teenage feet would naturally go up the wall and would casuse a lot of loud yelling from the parents.

But I digress.

To lie or not to lie?

Pixabay
That is not a question that a Polygraph machine understands because it WILL catch you out anyway you answer.

This was the confident pronouncement from my uncle Rex who was big in fraud with a major bank. I’ve just re read this and I hasten to add that he didn’t steal the money………he caught the crooks who did!

He told glorious, messy stories about embezzlement (sounds such an exciting complicated word) and entertained us all at family dinners.
‘White lies….fibs, call them what you will Audrey,’ he would scoff, ‘no such thing. One day I’ll show you.’

The ‘one day’ dawned. After dinner of delicious crispy potatoes, gravy and who cares whether the meat was chicken or beef, he brought out the suitcase with all the paraphernalia in it.

Aunt Audrey refused point blank to have her finger in a clamp or a strap around her ribcage, so uncle Rex asked our timid cousin May to do the honours. She blushed bright red and eager to please him, she agreed to be the guinea pig.

‘Ha,’ I thought, ‘little May has never even thought up a fib, let alone acted on one. This will be boring.

We poured tea while we waited.

Uncle Rex was a born teacher actually and showed us how it all worked. All I wanted to see was the way the flexible needle like pen waved up and down in response to May’s voice.

It moved whenever she spoke.

‘I’m going to ask you, and anyone else who wants a turn, 5 questions. Let’s pretend that some money has gone missing from Aunt Audrey’s handbag. It’s safe to say that May isn’t guilty as she’s already hooked up to the machine. For ‘fun’ the rest of you decide who has ‘taken the money’ while I leave the room. We did that and Bobby gave his guilt away with his huge smile…….but remember this was only a ‘game’.

Uncle Rex started questioning May. Tea went cold as we watched intently.

\he needle wobbled a little as she agreed that her name was indeed May. She was only allowed to answer yes or no. She agreed to her address and to the fact that she was wearing her favourite red spotted blouse. She answered ‘yes,’ in a soft voice when asked if she was there of her own accord.

Then came the question that we had been told was coming.

‘May, have you ever stolen something from a person who trusted you?’

Our jaws fell open as the pen started swinging wildly up and down the paper recording her pulse from the clamp on her finger and her heart rate from the band around her ribs.
As she said ‘no,’ in a small voice we burst out laughing as we could see the guilt on the page before us.

We saw a side of May that we had never seen before as she also burst out laughing and said, ‘well that revolting Dennis the Menace at school was shooting birds with that catty and yes, I did steal it!’ she announced defiantly. ‘And I burnt it.’
‘AND I was the only person he didn’t accuse.’ she said ruefully.

We all clapped.
May for dealing with the awful Dennis and also for the entertainment we had had that evening. ‘You’re a star uncle Rex,’ we chorused.

He explained that our pulse and heart rate cannot be controlled by anybody. The pen makes small evenly spaced lines when the answers are not stressed. As soon as a question causes stress the lines become much longer, up and down and very close together.
‘THAT is a picture of STRESS!’ he laughed giving May a friendly pat on her arm.

Now to find the crook who ‘stole the money from Aunt Audrey’s handbag.’

It didn’t really work out to be accurate because the designated crook was smiling so broadly and he was not stressed about it enough to change the pattern of the pen much.
He did show guilt however when he was asked the question that also ‘undid’ May, ‘did you ever steal something from
someone who trusted you?’. He confessed to stealing his 10 year old friend’s new bike and hiding it for a whole day behind the garage in a dark shed.
‘Pure jealousy,’ he admitted, ‘but I couldn’t wait until it was dark enough to put it back in HIS shed,’ he said wiping his teenage forehead in mock relief.

Aunt Audrey I noticed sat morosely and definsively in the chair futherest away from the ‘hideous machine’ she called it, nursing a second glass of whisky,
a double I noticed.

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