Amid the multitude of facts, opinions and news stories whirling around Donald Trump’s latest bizarre, unprecedented and seemingly self-serving action (that would be the firing of FBI Director James Comey if you aren’t even sure to which of his latest actions I am referring), one piece of the story has lingered with me.

I just can’t shake the image of White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer hiding in the bushes to avoid a direct confrontation with reporters seeking more information.

I have no doubt my obsession is linked to a memory from my childhood and my need to uncover the truth.

My story begins when my parents purchased our house in a rural, Central Oregon town  As part of the transaction, they had gotten a history from the seller, whose family had been the original owners. According to my mom, the seller’s father had “died in the bushes.”

I was six years old at the time, and the line of ornamental bushes that spanned the front of the house ran directly under my bedroom window. For months I was obsessed with the fact that a man had died in those bushes.

I would crawl under them trying to find any sign of either a dead body or, at least, some indication that a man had spent his last moments there. Even though I got nothing, I kept searching in hopes that some clue as to the man’s fate would emerge.

Then one day, my mom found me in the bushes and asked what I was doing.

“You said the man who used to live here died in the bushes,” I told her with all of the solemness that first-grade me could muster.

She had no idea what I was talking about. Only later did I discover that she had used the term “in the bushes” as a euphemism for alcoholism.

I’m now fifty years old, and I’ve never heard anyone else use that term in that way. But that doesn’t matter.

What does matter is that the term “in the bushes” has stuck with me for 44 years because it represents my passion for always pursuing the truth.

Which is why Sean Spicer ducking into the bushes to avoid facing reporters is not only completely ironic, it is more revealing than any lie Donald Trump could ever tell.

People in the public eye want to tell their side of the story. They want to share their opinions and the opinions of those they represent. They want to show evidence of what happened in the bushes and why it happened.

Unless, of course, the bushes are just a way of hiding the truth… be it the ugly truth of an addict who succumbed to a disease or that of an unqualified businessman who bedazzled voters with his wealth, his double speak, and his complete disregard for the truth.

But here’s the thing: when six-year-old me finally got the real facts from my mom, I stopped wasting my time under bushes and decided to devote more time to climbing trees.

Because when you climb trees, your perspective is so much better than the one you get crawling under (or hiding in) a bush.

And not only can you see what is actually occurring around you, you are also putting yourself out in the open for everyone else to see.

And that is what truth is all about.