When a lie-detector would have come in handy.

Have you ever found yourself mediating a dispute between two individuals ?

If both are honest, the mediating part is easy because you can easily make out who is
wrong and then it is just about making the wrong-doer understand his fault. But what
if both are lying about their role in the dispute ? It is plain tough as I learnt yesterday.

I first had the guy tell me how it was just not his fault that the whole fight happened
& that he was avoiding a fight until it was thrust in his face and he had to get physical.
Talking to him, I felt he had a point - sometimes women can be crappy.

Only till I talked to the girl. She was all tears and I could barely make out what she was
saying. Even in normal times, a girl's tears can make me (and most men) melt. So for a
few seconds, I was left speechless. She went on to say how she was avoiding a fight and
it was thrust in her face, till she could no longer avoid. And when she talked back, she
got hit by the guy.

Hey, wait. Wasn't that what the guy also said ? I was now seriously confused. More so
because I was talking to them over the phone & when you are not talking face-to-face,
it is all the more difficult to know if a person is lying or not. Not that it would have helped
if they were in front of me, because I am not really that good at catching liars by facial expressions, as I know from experience.

Anyway, as the girl was telling me her story, it was just 3 minutes to 7 PM (yesterday)
and time for my daily telecon. Ofcourse, I could not tell a weeping girl that I had to hang
up on her for some lousy call at work. So, I told her that a better judge would be my wife
and asked them both to call her - she knows them as well as I do.

As I return to work, I wonder how great it would have been to have a lie-detector, which
would have helped me solve this puzzle, where both seemed to be genuine. Though I am
sure that one of them has to be lying, because if both were so good as they claimed, the
fight would not have happened in the first place.

And yeah, the lie-detector would have come in handy for some other stuff too.