DEAR ABBY: I'm a 51-year-old woman with a question. What do you recommend a person do or say when being lied to? I'm not talking about the little white lies we all tell to spare someone's feelings, smooth things over, etc.
I once had a 21-year-old man tell me that he was a veteran of a war that had been over for 10 years! I felt like an idiot pretending to believe him and knew he'd be laughing at me later, but frankly, I felt scared to confront him. -- HEARD A WHOPPER
DEAR HEARD A WHOPPER: If you have reason to feel that the person talking to you is being untruthful, be polite and end the conversation. And if your intuition tells you the person is someone to be afraid of, put as much distance between you as possible and avoid that person in the future.