Question #167 Lying to Kids
When my friend Steve was little, his mom got annoyed by his begging for chocolate, and she told him he was allergic. He avoided birthday cupcakes and ice cream for years before he found out he actually wasn't.
When my mom was in a rush to leave a video store once, she told me the Paddington Bear VHS I was eyeing was actually a horror movie that would give me nightmares.
So, what's the biggest/funniest/weirdest lie someone told you when you were a kid? When and how did you find out the truth?
*Santa Claus stories are prohibited, we covered that already.
13 comments:
When I was four years old, my seven-year-old sister told me we were going to run away. She made it sound like a great adventure, so I bought in immediately and followed her well-planned directions to a tee.
I was to be the vanguard, she explained, leaving the house by myself to blaze the trail across the street and into the facing alleyway. Once in the alley, I was to wait while she distracted our parents, wrote a goodbye note, and so on before joining me later.
Under her watchful eye, I put all my possessions minus toys-- pretty much just a small bunch of clothes-- into a towel. The towel was then tied to the end of a stick and slung over my shoulder.
She opened our back window and helped lower me to the ground after I climbed through it. I crept along the side of the house to the front, then scurried across the street to the alleyway entrance that faced our house. Here I crouched behind a trash can and waited for my sister.
I waited at least an hour before the resident of the house I was crouched by noticed me through her window. She came out and escorted me home, where I discovered that my sister suddenly knew nothing of the whole runaway plan.
But she'd foiled herself in detailing it far beyond the imagination of a four-year-old (but not a seven-year-old). The key was that she'd told me to pack ALL my clothes into the shoulder-slung bindle, leaving me nothing to wear during the runaway.
That's right; I did the whole thing nude.
I'd say the dumbest/weirdest lie was when I was about 9 years old.
During her last years, my grandmother lived with us at my parents house cause she was too old and sick to live alone anymore. As I was on my way out the door to school one morning, she said "Have a nice day Davey, have anything special going on today?". Something came over me, and with the tone and conviction of Cartman I said "Why yes, actually, we are going on a school fieldtrip today - to outer space"
"Oh REALLY!? How wonderful!!", she said. I told her I'd miss out if I was late and hurried out the door snickering. I do remember saying "I'll tell you all about it when i get back home tonight! I'll take pictures" before I left.
I came home realizing how fucked up it was and that I should be sent straight to hell for lying to this woman I had so much to be thankful for and loved me so much. When I arrived home, I heard the first, middle and last name combination you never want to hear come from your father's voice in the other room. Apparently, she told both my folks and how excited she was and that I'd have pictures to share with her. I spend a good week grounded and without my skateboard for that one.
Looking back it's pretty innocent and funny for being 9 years old, but I couldn't help think I might get at least an eye of disapproval when I arrive at the gates for that one.
When I was 4 or 5 yrs old my mother had left my father with 3 girls and one boy, me being the younger of the 4.
They told me she couldn't live in that town anymore, she had to go..
When I was 13 yrs old my brother finally told me that she had been having an affair with the neighbor, her best friends husband and the husband being my dads close friend. Does that make sense? Being a total Jerry Springer episode, I was a little pist that nobody had told me earlier.
My brother also told me his copenhagen, chewing tobbaco, was infact shredded jerkey. Yeah, I took a huge "dip". Puking shortly after.
I was a pretty gullible kid but probably the main reason for that was that people never tried to tell me big massive lies. I mean of course Santa and the Tooth Fairy but my mom pretty much let me in on those early on. Noone ever tried to convince me that Hell was a real place underneath the earth.
I feel like I was told a lie by the m&m/mars company in ads like this. Even though they never came out and said it, they implied that you could conjure a Snickers bar by clenching your fist around some peanuts. I remember shelling peanuts arranging them just right in my hand trying to reproduce this effect.
Sorry for misreading the question to read the biggest lie "I" told as a kid, my apologies. This internet A.D.D. is really getting more apparent to me now.
i was pretty smart as a kid... so most lies diddn't actually work on me...
but my parents used to tell me that little tree gnomes lived in montgomery woods and that they built all the weird "stick art" or whatever it is...
thats the only one i can think of right now..
While I didn't believe that:
* schnapps was mouthwash
* cocaine was cold medicine
* paintbrushes were made from gnome's beards
I did believe that the hot dogs at candlestick park were vegetarian and that people evolved from monkeys. Two obvious lies.
actually my mom swears she never told me i was allergic. either way, if she did, it wasn't due to my being annoying or her being annoyed with me (i was a perfect little dude).
the explanation my family came up with: there was prob a kid at school who had the allergy and i may have thought it was exotic and adopted the allergy for attention.
either way, it was harsh to live that lie. to this day, if i see a vanilla cupcake i cringe.
I knew Steve would start answering if I called him an annoying little kid.
My dad is a science geek and would always try to explain fairly complex physics concepts to me as very young child. While he didn’t necessarily lie, he definitely enjoyed my misconceptions and misunderstandings of scientific ideas (and wouldn’t necessarily correct them).
For example, I remember him explaining black holes to me when I was really little. For whatever reason, I completely understood the concept of what they were; but I sort of thought they could appear out of no where and suck people into a crushing oblivion. I was afraid of them living under my bed or chasing me at night, etc. I would even look over my shoulder to make sure one wasn’t fallowing me when I walked home from school. In fact I think it wasn’t until middle school when I realized that they didn’t really work like that.
I was also terrified of “gravity waves”. I was a really fidgety, squirmy little kid and I would always fall out of my chair at the dinner table or fall down while leaning against something. Whenever I did this my dad would shout “gravity wave!”. This lead to me being very self-conscious whenever I stood up in front of people to talk, like at show-and-tell or class plays, etc. I was afraid that a gravity wave would come and knock me over and I would fall down in front of everyone. Eventually, I grew out of my randomly-falling-down stage and realized my dad was just laughing at me.
as many will attest, i live a life chalked full of misconceptions. it's not that my mother meant to lie to me, she just thought her explanations were the most rational. again, as all know, i adopted this trait and carried it with me for many many years. it still shows every now and again, but i think i'm getting better. things i was confused about (until my late teens or early twenties) were:
spinach. i had no idea spinach was grown like lettuce. i had some weird idea that spinach was grown like seaweed leading me to avoid it until i was twenty.
i thought subtle and suttle were synonyms for all of my high school career. it wasn't until re-entering college at twenty-four i realized that suttle is not a word (sorry ms. alto and mr. albrecth).
the indian casino at crystal geyser. most of my life i thought that the casino at crystal geyser was actual geysers, like old faithful, albeit different because their electricity was harnessed. recently, while driving on highway 101 with my mom, i asked her what the lights on the hill were. she responded, "it the geysers, it's where all the electricity comes from." a week later i went to the casino and lost $300 on black jack. i still haven't corrected her.
I can't remember any huge lies, but my parents often avoided the truth to smooth things over. I remember listening and singing along to Madonna at a very young age and asking my mother what a virgin was. After a funny look she explained to me that the song was about the Virgin Mary.
There also came a point in my life when I realized that every pet I ever had probably didn't run away.
I was an overly logical kid... so they only way to convince me that there were no more monsters in my bedroom closet, was for my dad to post a sign saying that it was forbidden. I believe it was phrased "Attention: No Monsters Allowed in Tiffany and Kelsey's Closet"
Worked like a charm.
My parents didn't really lie much. Though, I did recently get a list of bizarre foods (bear, snake, etc) that I have eaten as a kid in the name of 'chicken'.
Post a Comment