When my husband and I discovered we were expecting our first child in November of 2008, we engaged in nightly pillow talk (read: I forced endless baby name conversations upon him and he fell asleep during my ramblings) about our unborn child. Who would he look like? Would he have my husband’s easy going disposition or would this kiddo be feisty like his Mama? Regardless of appearance or personality, Zach and I agreed we hoped our little one would grow up to be H-4: healthy, happy, hard working, and honest. The latter characteristic would need to be instilled by means of leading through example and, shoot, that wouldn’t be hard: we don’t lie. Except that we do. And it’s mostly to those we love…
Don’t start pointing your fingers and shaking your judgmental little heads just yet. Chances are that if you love anyone under the age of, say, 100, you lie, too.
Santa Claus? Yep, dude is real. And he will remain that way until the day I have to explain that he is a physical representation of the abstract spirit of giving and love that fills our homes around the holidays. Perhaps I will find a better way to break that down for Ella, who I fully expect to blow the lid off the whole Christmas thing way before the sweet, naive Brady even thinks twice about it. In the meantime, though, I am shaking with excitement at the idea of being able to use Santa as leverage: “You kids better clean up that mess if you want Santa to come here!” That, my friends, makes me a big fat liar. And I’m totally fine with it.
Fortunately, I am not alone in my telling of tales. My gal pal confided in me that she told her 2-year-old daughter she would be magic like Dora the Explorer if she ate her soy beans. The kid housed them. Where’s the harm in that lie? The child is healthier and she probably already thought she was magic anyway. Seriously, these little people really think they’re invisible if they hide behind their own hands, so…
Another friend tells her son that his teeth will fall out if he doesn’t brush them. While I respect this lie as an avid teeth-brusher, I can only hope that the day this boy loses his first tooth he doesn’t have a major meltdown thinking all of those years brushing were in vain.
I wish I could say my fibs stop with the kids, but, alas, they do not. When my grandma was alive (may God rest her soul and may He also have His earplugs handy), she was incredibly concerned about, are you ready for it?, my eyebrows. She was always asking me if I “plucked.” If you knew me prior to junior high, you are laughing right now because you bore witness to the uni-brow that stretched every which way across my forehead and, on a good day, would meet my hairline if I scrunched my face up just right. Thank you, Italian ancestry. So, yes, I “plucked” the crap outta my brow. But I could never, ever tell Grandma that. She maintained that women would kill for my thick brow (“Just look at Brooke Shields!!!”) and if I took tweezers to them, they would grow in twice as thick. I swear this topic kept her up at night. So what did I say when she asked me on a weekly basis about this? “No way, Gram. There is no plucking going on here.” Liar, liar pants on fire.
I kinda feel like if we really do love someone, we have to lie to them sometimes. It’s in their best interest, for their sanity, or whatever. I realize this makes me sound like a huge hypocrite because I truly do consider myself a very honest person. However, I am not willing to worry my parents with my random problems, so when they ask if everything is okay, most of the time, I just tell them things are peachy. I’ve been known to do the same for Zach: if I’ve escaped the day unharmed by the throes of the Terrible Twos and he asks how Brady behaved, I’m going to let him believe that the kid was a golden child. They only get a few hours together during the week, why would I ruin them? I certainly don’t advocate stretching the truth for an arbitrary reason (if you don’t want to get together because you’d rather nap, just tell me. I’ll respect your honesty and envy your sleep. No need to fake your 3rd illness this month.), but there is a time and place where a minor fiblet can make a major difference.
Men are the kings of the Minor Fib. They have to be, otherwise, many of us would still be single ladies. Before we were married, Zach would go anywhere I wanted without batting an eye: to the city to meet my friends for drinks, to see a Sandra Bullock movie (he claims all her movies are the same, yet still attended), to the mall so I could “just browse.” Fast forward to 5.5 years of marriage where asking him to drive an hour to the city for a Blue Moon elicits nothing but a belly laugh. When I asked why he would do it then and not now, he simply (and honestly) replied: “I was trying to impress you.” Well, then. To be fair, though, I did the same to him; pre-ring, I attended many a’baseball game and three too many John Mellencamp concerts. Now, if Zach so much as mentions the name John, I’m armed with an excuse of why I can’t endure one more pseudo concert that morphs into a middle-aged-wanna-be farmer yelling about big businesses ruining corn before the first set is over. Sorry, flashback to the last show…
Anyway, while these may not have been the same kind of lies we tell our kids, they were purposefully misleading nonetheless. But their purpose, to love someone a little better, worked. My Gram rested easy because she believed my uni-brow separation was au naturel, I snagged one heck of a husband due in part to my rocking out to “Jack and Diane,” and I would like to think that Zach feels just as fortunate to have found me. And if he doesn’t, I can only hope he cares enough to at least lie about it now.
my days are better when you blog.