I lied about my height and instantly regretted it.

As a Middle School English teacher, I often have what I call a "Book Chat" with my students once a week. They come to my classroom, sit in a circle, and we chat about what they're reading. I have each student write the title of their book and their name on a card in order to get to know them better. I have 160+ students, so I do whatever I can to get to know them as much as possible in the few minutes we have. One of my students had the same first name as someone else in my class, so I hoped to differentiate. I asked him what was an interesting fact about himself and he told me he was 6'2". I joked that I'm 5'11" and he's almost as tall as me. He laughed and said "oh, you're tall." I said "yeah, I'm really tall." He agreed and I wrote on his card "Almost as tall as Ms. K." to help me remember. That night, I kept thinking about how nice it was of him to say I was tall. I'm only 5'3". <br><br>The next time my "tall class" came in for a chat, he asked me how tall I was, and I instantly regretted my lie. I had never felt like I was lying to my students before, and it was a terrible feeling. One of my classes is mostly filled with basketball players, so they're all very tall. There's no reason why I had to lie. I just did. He asked "how tall are you?" And I said, 5'3". And he said "I would've never guessed. You're really tall!" And I said "Thank you. I really appreciate that." I felt so guilty for having lied. I wonder what he thought when I told him the truth. I wonder how many other lies he's caught adults in. I have no idea why I lied. It made me feel bad, and it makes me feel worse thinking about it even though it's been years. I never lied to my students again.