When in Doubt, Lie

As parents, we've seen it all.  Crayon scribbles on the living room wall.  Muddy footprints on the deep pile carpet.  Chocolaty smudges on the furniture proving that, despite claims to the contrary, MnM's do indeed melt in your hand.  Finding the perpetrator of such kiddie-crimes is usually pretty easy, especially if you only have one kid.  But I've always been somewhat amazed that, even in the face of irrefutable evidence, 98.3% of all children between the ages of two and eighteen will always give the lie a chance.

It was a Saturday morning, my son Ryan was not quite three.  I heard him tooling around in the living room, so I stumbled out of bed to see what he was up to and maybe fix us both a healthy breakfast of Cap'n Crunch and brown sugar cinnamon Poptarts.  When I got to the living room, I found him sitting on the coffee table, magic markers strewn about the carpet, looking like he was auditioning for Tatted Toddlers, inked to the elbows.

Okay, I'll admit it, I had to chuckle.  But then, putting on the "stern dad" face, I asked, "Ryan, how did your arms get like that?"

He looked me straight in the eye and said, "I didn't do it."

I'll say it again, the boy was TWO YEARS OLD.  So I have to wonder, at what age do children first realize that lying is an option?  Is it a survival instinct that they're born with?  Fight, flight, or lie your ass off?  Certainly they don't learn it from their parents.  We'd never lie to our children about anything, right?

Of course we would.  And the exact degree of bullshit varies depending upon the age of the child.  For example, up until the age of five, we lie to them like this:

"I know he might look a little different, but trust me, that's the same goldfish."

Not too long after the magic marker incident, Ryan and I were at a Fall Carnival at his preschool.  They had all sorts of games and activities for the kids.  Ryan wanted to try the traditional "throw the ping-pong ball into the bowl and win the goldfish."  Sure enough, on about his fifth try, he succeeded, making us the proud owners of "Mr. Krinklebine," the slightly unhealthy-looking feeder fish.  We stopped by the pet store on the way home, and spent about thirty bucks on a bigger bowl, fish food, gravel, and the requisite ceramic scuba diver.  Two nights later, Mr. Krinklebine was floating.  Like any good parent, I went to the pet store and bought a new fish, flushed Mr. K., substituted the impostor, and all was well.  Over the next seven years, there were about twelve different Mr. Krinklebines.  Finally, when Ryan was about ten, he was the one to discover the body.  I explained the circle of life, and we gave him a dignified burial at sea.

There's a pretty funny footnote to this story.  Ryan never caught on.  Not too long ago, when he was about sixteen, he was reminiscing about the pets we've had.  "Hey, Dad, remember Mr. Krinklebine?  Man, that fish lived a long time, what, about eight years?"

I laughed my ass off.

"What's so funny?" he asked.

"Um, I hate to break this to you now, but there were about a dozen of him."

"What?  You lied to me about my goldfish?"

Absolutely.

As the kids get a bit older, we have to step up our game.  They're a little tougher to fool, but it can still be done.  Let's take a look at one of the classics: 

"Being a kid was a lot harder when I was your age."

Okay, sure, kids today have all sorts of conveniences that we never had.  Cell phones, the Internet, high-tech video games.  But let's be honest, it's not like our generation grew up in the 1850's, waking up at 4:30 in the morning to chop wood for the stove and slop the hogs.  We weren't shearing any sheep in 1977, that's for damn sure.  No, the fact is my childhood was pretty candyass.  I woke up at 7:30 in the morning, enjoyed a healthy breakfast of Lucky Charms and frosted strawberry Poptarts, and walked to school in seasonably-predictable weather wearing a sturdy pair of Keds.  If it was uphill at all, we didn't really notice.  On the rare occasions we were asked to do manual labor, like shoveling snow or raking leaves, we expected (and often received) a reasonable allowance.

And we sure as hell never had to worry about some cyber-bully taking a picture of us in the locker room and posting it on his Facebook page.  Our bullies were more traditional, goons like Danny Esposito who would wait for you after class just to give you a power wedgie that you were picking out of your butt crack all through fifth grade.  Not only that, the bastard would stalk you every day in the lunchroom, and swipe your Snack Pack chocolate pudding that your mom bought especially for you because she knew it was your favorite, but you never got to eat it, not once, because Esposito friggin' took it.  And then, in sixth grade, when you were giving your oral report on the Egyptian pyramids, he accidentally (but not really) dropped his social studies book on top of your Great Pyramid, the one that took you six hours and five hundred sugar cubes to make, and had to beg your mom to drive you to school that day so you didn't drop it while you walked.

That's all hypothetical, of course.

Once our kids hit the teenage years, successfully putting one over on them becomes darn near impossible.   Not only do our kids become insufferable lunatics, they also develop a healthy skepticism of our every word.  So their questions demand a much more sophisticated level of deception. 

"Of course not!  I never touched alcohol until I was 21."
"Of course not!  I never had sex with anyone until I was married to your mother/father."
"Of course not!  I have never tried any kind of drugs."

Answering our teenagers' questions about the things we did at their age always presents a dilemma.  On the one hand we want to be honest, in the hopes that they'll be honest in return, allowing us to have open dialogue about the dangers of alcohol, drug use, and sexual promiscuity.  But what if they use our history against us?  Maybe they'll think, "Well, my dad shot heroin, guzzled tequila and nailed an endless parade of disease-ridden hookers and he didn't turn out that screwed up," and see it as permission to experiment with those very things.  "You did those things, so why can't I?" they'll say, at least, that's what we're afraid of.

So we lie.  And try to fool our teenagers into thinking that we were tee-totaling virgins until the age of thirty.

Look, I'm not condoning dishonesty.  Sure, we have to take a few strategic liberties from time to time, but for the most part, as the cliche says, "honesty is the best policy."  We're better off teaching our kids to take responsibility for their actions and to be forthright when explaining their misbehavior.

I remember one time when I was about twelve, my brothers and I were goofing around in the backyard.  We set up a few tin cans on the porch, and tried to knock them over with rocks.  On my second or third shot, I winged one a bit too hard and shattered the kitchen window.  Naturally, I pointed the finger of guilt at my brother Eric, who adamantly declared his innocence.  In an effort to get to the truth, my dad put his hand on my shoulder, looked me in the eye and said, "If you just tell me the truth, you won't get in trouble."

Which was, of course, a lie.

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Zen and the Art of Seat Selection

Bus 12 was, for all intents and purposes, a carbon monoxide-wheezing reform school on wheels.

Choosing a seat among the inmates was basically a game of mass transit Russian Roulette. Those of us at stop number one (Runyon and Grove), had it best because when we got on the bus, there were nothing but empty seats to choose from. But there was definitely a seat-selection strategy involved. First of all, you had to make sure that there was at least one kid (preferably two) in the seat behind you. This was important (we're talking "I'll-give-you-my-Twinkie-to-sit-there" important), because Danny Paluccio got on at the SECOND stop. Paluccio was making his second attempt at the fifth grade, was built like an oil drum and had all the charm and compassion of a flea-bitten wombat. There's no way in hell you wanted that goon behind you because the rest of your trip would be festooned with noogies, neck slaps, and wet willies.

After the Paluccio stop, the next order of business was making sure that the seat you were in was full. If you didn't partner up at the original stop, you definitely wanted to recruit a seatmate at stop number two (someone besides Paluccio, obviously), or else you ran the risk of having Patti Ramberg sit next to you when she boarded at stop number three. Patti was a cootie-infested elementary school version of Miss Almira Gulch and everyone from kindergarten to fifth grade knew it. If Ramberg sat next to you, well, you were that morning's cootie-by-association. Chants of "YOU HAD TO SIT BY RAMMMM-BERRRRG" followed you around the rest of the day.

One fateful morning in April, a second grader named Snot Bubble got the double-whammy.

Barry "Snot Bubble" Feldman was a pip-squeak, complete with a do-it-yourself haircut, perpetually runny nose, and a banged-up Flintstones lunchbox. On the morning that the School Bus Gods pointed their collective fingers of misfortune Barry's way, he got on the bus with the rest of us at stop number one and chose the front seat assuming, I suppose, that the bus driver would offer some form of security. Barry was young and a tad naive.

Barry enjoyed his solitude on the first leg of the journey, the only slight mishap occurring when the bus driver hit the Clay Avenue dip at too high a speed, causing Snot Bubble to levitate momentarily from his seat and bang his head against the window during the ensuing descent. He blinked a few times, and shook off the cobwebs just as the bus slammed to a halt at the corner of Bound Brook Road and South Lincoln Avenue.The door hissed open and Paluccio slithered aboard. He paused at the top of the bus steps and surveyed the hunting ground. His beady eyes focused on Snot Bubble, then on the empty seat behind him, and a smirk crept upon the bully's face. With his trusty sidekick Marco Stevens at his side, Paluccio plopped down behind Snot Bubble and opened the day's festivities with a slap to the back of the head.

"What's goin' on wit' you ta-day, Snot Bubble?"

"Weave me awone, Pawuccio."

"Yeah, Danny," mocked Marco, "weave him awone." The two thugs guffawed like a pair of doped-up hyenas.

For the next mile or so, in addition to enduring the usual bone-jarring and teeth-gnashing caused by diabolically placed potholes, Snot Bubble suffered though a litany of taunts, ear lobe-flicking, and other Paluccio-inflicted humiliation.

The bus chugged on to stop number three, where the final group of miscreants slunk aboard. Patti Ramberg was the last one on, and by that point the only choice she was left with was riding shotgun with Snot Bubble, whose morning was immediately downgraded from "miserable" to "tragic".

Paluccio made the official call. "AND THE WINNER OF TODAY'S 'SIT BY THE COOTIE' CONTEST IS . . . "

A rough stretch of road served as a makeshift drum roll . . .

"SNOT BUBBLE!"

Snot Bubble struggled to fight back the tears. In the seat across the aisle, two first graders were talking about a birthday celebration, complete with chocolate cake, Neapolitan ice cream and Amaze-o the Magician, but there was no party in Barry Feldman's eight year-old heart. Just a bunch of deflated balloons and a busted pinata.

"Hi Barry, are you okay?" asked Ramberg. Cootie rumors aside, Patti was really a very nice girl but her gawky appearance mitigated against any potential popularity. Fair? Of course not, but this was elementary school.

"I'm fine, Wamberg. Don't wowwy about it."

"You know that Danny's just a big ol' bully, right? He's nothing to be afraid of."

"I'm not afwaid of him, Wamberg, I just wish he'd stop fwicking my ears and stuff."

The bus squealed into a sharp left turn, centrifuging Snot Bubble and Ramberg into some unintentional body contact.

"Hey look, Danny," squealed Marco, "She's giving him a hug!"

"Yeah," said Paluccio. "I think they're gonna make out. Snot Bubble, aren't you a little young to have a girlfriend?"

"Quit it, Pawuccio! She's not my goolfwiend! Stop being a buwwy!"

Ramberg did her best to make Snot Bubble feel better, but it was difficult with Paluccio harassing them. Apparently, though, even cooties have their breaking point.

"Danny, knock it off right now!" Ramberg shouted in his face after witnessing the application of a nasty Indian burn to Snot Bubble's left forearm. "He's a little tiny kid, and you're nothing but a left-back, stupid animal! Does it make you feel all big and important to make a little kid cry? Just leave him and everyone else alone, or I'll go right to the principal and make sure that you don't ride another school bus for the rest of your pathetic life!"

This, of course, got the attention of every single passenger on Bus 12.

"OOOH! She got YOU, Paluccio!"

"You tell 'im, Ramberg!"

"Paluccio just got BURNED!"

Danny Paluccio, to the surprise of no one, disregarded the verbal cootie-slapping, and the bus ride home that same day featured the willful destruction of a third grader's eyeglasses. True to her word, Ramberg reported him to the principal the following morning. No fewer than twenty-two additional witnesses subsequently spoke up, detailing a sordid history of prepubescent terror. Paluccio was banished from Bus 12 for the rest of the year, and eventually dropped out of high school in the middle of grade ten. No one missed him, not even Marco.

As he grew older, perhaps Barry Feldman's "Paluccio Experience" helped him develop a knack for avoiding life's less desirable seating options. When he went to the doctor's office, did he choose a solitary chair in the waiting room corner to avoid a phlegm-honking septuagenarian? Was he careful to book the aisle seat on flights so as not to be sandwiched between six hundred pounds of Phoenix-bound Shriners? I'd like to think that he'd learned from his fateful second grade blunder.

Although, given the choice between the Shriners and Danny Paluccio, I might take my chances with the fez-wearing porkers. I've got this thing against wet willies.


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