every afternoon, i eat an apple at my desk.
and every afternoon, i stare at the tiny white spots on the skin, still believing, in some way, that those little spots are vitamins.
from whence came this insanity?
my own mother!
see, at some point in my childhood, my mom, in a desperate attempt to get me to eat an apple without her having to go through the torture of de-skinning it, told me that i HAD to eat the skin, cos that’s where the vitamins lived.
she pointed to the tiny white dots and said, “see? those are the vitamins!”
mom, i don’t know if you remember doing this or not, but i swear, you did. I SWEAR.
and you guys, i believed this lie until high school. I KNOW!!!! i am not joking. i don’t remember what year it was, but during lunch, i pointed out the “vitamins” to a friend who promptly stared at me incredulously.
friend: “sarah, you can’t really *see* the vitamins. they’re in the skin, but you don’t see them.”
me: I CANNOT BELIEVE MY MOM LIED TO ME!!!
i felt like a kid who painstakingly avoids sidewalk cracks his whole life, only to find out that his mom’s back will not, in fact, break.
of course, my parents had lied to me before. i’m talking about the whole Santa Claus Scandal, not to mention the Tooth Fairy Cover-Up. but those are the sort of fables you *expect* yr parents to tell you, and i don’t know about you guys, but i wasn’t upset when i found out the truth.
actually, i *was* upset about the tooth fairy, namely wondering, “so does this mean i won’t get paid for my teeth anymore? GAH. why didn’t i keep my mouth shut?!”
my parents never told me that the tooth fairy might KILL ME! more lies!!!
obviously, i believe that my parents did a great job of raising me, and i don’t think they ever made a habit of lying to me. but still, i couldn’t help but wonder if they’d ever said something just to induce me to, maybe, eat more vegetables or share my barbies without pinching anyone. it was a tad unsettling.
and then, after years of babysitting lots and lots of brats, i mean, adorable rugrats, i started to seriously question the value of honesty.
you know, the whole “yr face will freeze like that” or “this is going on yr permanent record, young lady!!”
i mean, there’s only so much negotiation you can do with a four year old before the stakes are raised and you find yrself referencing santa claus’ “secret surveillance cameras.” oh yeah, i went there.
so now i’m interested in hearing about the little lies other people were told when they were children. how long did you believe them (please someone else say high school)?
and, if you have kids or plan on having kids, where would you cross the line? maybe you won’t know until you cross it but… what about the whole santa thing? i personally think it’s fine and fun and i STILL want to leave cookies out for santa (er, my dad) to this day, but i know there’s the whole materialistic aspect that goes with it.
and if someone tells me that a bunny does not actually lay cadbury eggs, I WILL SCREAM.
LINKS
oh daily show, i love you.
is “tropic thunder” the new “three amigos”? vulture offers proof, in chart form!
check out the inspiring story of pakistani women, burned and disfigured by their husbands, who are given a second chance. GAH people amaze me.
merri su sent me this link to a totally weird and charming set of cartoons… about muffins. the best part? their little muffin voices!!!!
after watching only three videos, you too can master the internet (<– hilarious).
my dad told me that if i didn’t remove a splinter from my hand then a tree would grow from my hand. i’m extremely gullible.
My mom once told me that it was bad luck to wear one shoe on and one shoe off. I’m still not sure if it was a lie because soon after I not only stepped on a bee but on a nail as well.(not the same day). Silly child
Hey, thanks (for the link). I don’t know your email address so I just commented…not to be a stalker or anything.
My parents tried to convince me that they went to Smart Mommy and Daddy school before they were allowed to have kids.
One time, my parents told me they loved me. LIES!
Actually, the white lies didn’t come up so much in my family. Tooth fairy and Santa Claus a little bit, but when I asked if any of them were real, the first thing they said was, “Do you really want to know?” And I think that until I was six or seven I knew that I liked having that sense of mystery. Heh. I outgrew that later!
But even when I was four and said I wanted to run away to my friend’s house down the street (because they had an Atari), my mom just told me that she’d help me pack my bags. I think she said that threat a lot, like you would use Santa’s surveillance cameras, Sarah, so this one time I decided to call her bluff. Needless to say, she totally helped me pack my bag (I only had one - a Wonder Woman suitcase), and I walked down the street to my friend’s house.
That night, we played Atari for a few hours, and then I slept on the floor in his room. His mom came in to tuck him in, and their routines were just so different from what I was used to. I missed my mom immediately, but didn’t want to say anything right away.
Of course, I was four, so I don’t remember all of the details, and I can’t even tell you if I ended up going home that night or if I toughed it out until the morning before I meekly made my way home and asked if I could live with them again. My mom obviously said yes, but didn’t say anything about how she hoped I’d learned my lesson, or threaten that next time I wouldn’t be allowed back. Instead, she told me that if I wanted to leave again, she’d still help me pack. And holy crap, I believed her.
I suppose that hearing about that story, it could come off as cruel to a four year old’s ears, but I think I always appreciated that. Really, it was only unfair that I could leave whenever I wanted to but she was stuck with me no matter what.
I just finished watching an episode of Penn and Teller about “Stranger Danger”.
When I was five, I told my mom, “Mom, look, I know there’s no Santa Claus, okay? It just doesn’t make sense. There’s no way he could make it to all those houses in just one night. It’s okay, you can tell me.” And so she did, being a very honest mom, and I immediately started sobbing, “There’s no magic in the world! There’s no magic in the world!” Much later when we had the conversation about why I stopped going to church, she told me, “That was when I knew you’d be trouble.”
I do remember one lie she told me. In third grade, I raised rabbits in 4-H (that’s right. I was a cowgirl. Shut up.), and my favorite was Brownie. Brownie got out and my beagle, Dixie, sort of…messily devoured him. When I came home from school, there was brown fur all over our backyard and I was hysterical, thinking about how scared Brownie must have been when Dixie started eating him. So Mom told me that Brownie had a heart attack of fright as soon as he saw Dixie and Dixie just ate him, you know, afterwards. It wasn’t until high school when I was telling someone this story that it occurred to me that it probably wasn’t true.
My dad once told me that a cactus would jump at me and bite so I wouldn’t get too close. I think I believed that until jr. high, which is really sad.
oops. that was me. not chris.
My dad used to tell us that we kissed our elbows when we were younger and that it turned us into the opposite gender. We would try to kiss our elbows to change back (all the while getting encouragement from my dad, who is probably still laughing). It’s impossible to do.
We were also told that if we swallowed fruit seeds, like watermelon, the plant would grow inside of us.
He also told my brother, when he was like 3, that if he pushed real hard, he would get chest hair. My brother would go around the house pushing and pushing until he was beat red in the face. Every time, my dad would say, “I think I am beginning to see one!” and the pushing would begin all over again.
My dad always convinced us of something, and it was always really funny.
Kristina and I told Jeff that his peas were bubble gum (small, green, round…) and he lapped them up like a dog for years. I think he was approaching junior high until he figured out that they really were not bubble gum.
I believed in Santa until I was eight or so and Paul Carson ruined it for me, and proceeded to mock me in front of everyone. I think I wasn’t the only one who was shocked though and some of the kids laughing at me were secretly in tremendous pain.
I wasn’t really bothered, though. My parents were furious because I think they were worried the older kid had deliberately screwed with the young kid (which he had) and upset me (which he hadn’t). I don’t know, it just made sense. I don’t want to go into too much detail on the Irish economy in the 2980s but Santa had been operating on a budget for years.
Although my parents were spectacularly fiendish. They would call up my uncle and tell him he was Santa, and before he could say no or hang up, would hand the phone to me and my sisters. He was charged with this service against his will for years.
Finally, I was told that the world’s best footballers grew up eating cabbage. I doubt very much this is true.
I wish John actually could tell us something about the Irish economy in the 2980s. Even under a budget, by that time Santa HAS to be bringing all the good boys and girls jetpacks, right?
wow, these stories are amazing. who knew that everyone had such, er, creative parents?!
i mean, a splinter into a tree? smart mommy and daddy school? pushing for chest hair? these are like, the Tall Tales of our time.
p.s. henri, i bet you looked so cute, walking down the street with yr wonder woman suitcase! eeee!
i grew up on lies, but probably my favorite is that my dad said he cried every time he had to send us to our rooms, because it made him feel bad when we got in trouble.
I can’t remember a story right now but I wanted to respond to the Brownie story. Rabbits do go into shock and sort of ‘pass out’ before being eaten. At least, that is what Ginny with a G who is biologist and a bunny owner told me. But this was after our dog had eaten her bunny, so maybe it was one of those lies we told ourselves to keep our friendship in tact. I am still choosing to believe that their little hearts can’t take trauma and do conk out on them before feeling too much pain. Amen.
I found out recently that my dad made a promise to me when I was born that he would never lie to me. (He’s very serious about this not lying thing. It’s comforting now, but I remember as a kid wishing he wasn’t quite so honest when I had my violin recitals.) I remember as a kid that he never actually mentioned Santa Claus, though he did allow me to believe by letting my grandparents perpetuate the myth and by putting things in my stocking and under the tree on Christmas morning (we opened family presents on Christmas Eve). And putting money under my pillow for baby teeth.
I specifically remember asking him one Christmas about how Santa would get into our house since we didn’t have a chimney, and I also specifically remember me coming up with the idea that he must have a magic key. What I don’t remember is my dad’s participation in the conversation.
I figured it all out one year at Easter when my grandmother had me pick out my own Easter basket. But I decided that I wouldn’t tell my dad that I knew b/c I still wanted the Christmas morning loot! (Ah, greedy greedy only child.)
My teacher said when she was going through her uber-feminist stage, (she’s only normal feminist now) she told her daughter that Jesus had a twin sister named Samantha and she believed that through college! I didn’t trust my parents for two years when I asked if Santa was real. My dad told me that if i stood behind the bathroom door I would end up like my brother Squishy who got smashed by the door and died.