Lie and Smile

My ex-husband knew how to do two things

Lie and smile

He was particularly good at one
And lousy at the other

Guess which one was which?

Yup, yup, yup

Lies and smiles

When we got divorced
I thought about which one I'd like to take with me

The lies or the smiles

It's not as easy a choice
As you would think

Because, you see
The lies at least made me happy
While I was listening to 'em

The smiles made me nervous
Because they meant
That something had already been done

Something was over
Something was now out of my control

Not that they weren't pretty smiles

But every time I saw one
It meant there was a spill somewhere
That I had to go clean up

Now I don't date men who smile
But I assume they still lie

We thought my father never told a lie in his life
And then when he died
We found a box full of letters
From some woman in California named Jean

Figures my daddy was smilin'
When we put him in the ground

I guess he'd been smiling at us his whole life
And we just never noticed

The man I'm seeing now just lied to me for the first time tonight

We were eating and I asked him what he's doing tomorrow
Because he doesn't work on Tuesdays
And he told me he's going to spend the day with his brother
Helping him move

And I knew it was a lie

But just to test him, I leaned over and looked at him
And sure enough, he smiled back at me

As if to say--Yup, I just put one over on you, and now I'm frosting it with a grin

Sometimes I wish I were as dumb
As men think I am

What a blissful existence
That would be