It’s amazing to think about all the lies we’re told as children, and it’s even more amazing how willingly and thoroughly we believe these lies. I don’t mean this in a cynical way; it’s just the way it is. My brother who I idolized for most of my childhood was notorious for feeding me lies for his own amusement, and I was notorious (still am actually) for believing him without a doubt. I was told that bees wouldn’t sting if your body temperature was lower than normal, a claim that caused me to stick my hand out of a car window in chilly October air for twenty minutes. I also have this lie to thank for a very embarrassing moment in my college biology study group. I bought more “magic quarters” than I can remember. These were worth a dollar or more, depending on the amount of magic they contained. I also believed Fun Dip was cocaine and that my brother was addicted to it for at least a week. He denies a lot of this, but I stand by it. Who remembers a crime better, the victim or the attacker?
It wasn’t just my brother that lied to me though. My dad was the biggest liar when it came to Christmas. “If you go downstairs and Santa is still here, he’ll leave and take every single present with him.” My brother and I would sit obediently at the top of the stairs while my parents went down to assess the situation and to ensure that Santa had in fact left the building. I wouldn’t have gone down those stairs even if the house were on fire, that’s how much I believed in my father’s words. When I would question him on the logistics of Santa, my father had an answer for everything. “He might not eat all the cookies. He probably takes some back to all the elves at the North Pole.” “Well, if the fireplace is on, he’ll use his magic key that lets him open any door in the world.” “Yes, it would be terrible if he lost that key, but I’m sure he’s made plenty of extras.”
My mother’s lies are probably the most memorable…and terrifying. I still get nervous stepping off and on an escalator thanks to this woman. The green glow that appears from below the steps of the escalator? What is that Mom? Oh that? It’s just the escalator monster. It eats a steady and delicious diet of children that forget to tie their shoes or whose pant-legs drag the ground. Up we go!
Any time my mother caught me doing something wrong, she’d always say “A little birdie told me you were in here doing something you aren’t supposed to.” Until middle school at least, I felt certain that my mother had a pet bird, a parrot of some sort that she kept hidden somewhere. It would follow me around and then fly back to my mother and squawk, “She’s eating cookies. Beeeooockkk! She’s eating cookies.” For years, I would ransack the closets and file cabinet drawers for signs of his existence: bird-seed, an empty cage, anything. I wanted this damn bird to die.
I know now that most of these lies were told to protect me. My dad was just trying to protect the fun and innocence of Christmas for his kids as long as possible. As a parent, I guess you only have so many “Santa Christmases.” And he was right. Christmas was never the same since the year I found my bike in the basement two weeks before the big day. My dad of course had some logical explanation about Santa making the big deliveries early to keep the sleigh from getting overcrowded, but I knew. It was over. My brother didn’t have to play the game anymore and we slept later that year than ever before. My mother’s lies were all intended to protect me from something. She wanted to keep me off the six-o-clock news as that tragic story of the kid who got sucked into the escalator (or gobbled up by it, to use her language). She didn’t want me to hurt myself by doing things behind her back that she had warned me about. It was effective; that’s for sure.
All of this came about as I was doing some lesson planning during one of our snow days. I came across a poem that I really enjoy reading with my students.
The History Teacher - Billy Collins
Trying to protect his students' innocence
he told them the Ice Age was really just
the Chilly Age, a period of a million years
when everyone had to wear sweaters.
And the Stone Age became the Gravel Age,
named after the long driveways of the time.
The Spanish Inquisition was nothing more
than an outbreak of questions such as
"How far is it from here to Madrid?"
"What do you call the matador's hat?"
The War of the Roses took place in a garden,
and the Enola Gay dropped one tiny atom on Japan.
The children would leave his classroom
for the playground to torment the weak
and the smart,
mussing up their hair and breaking their glasses,
while he gathered up his notes and walked home
past flower beds and white picket fences,
wondering if they would believe that soldiers
in the Boer War told long, rambling stories
designed to make the enemy nod off.
I wonder, if I ever become a parent, what lies will I tell my children to protect them and keep them innocent for as long as possible? At what age am I supposed to stop lying to them? What will they feel when they realize I wasn’t telling them the truth? Do these lies actually protect them or do they go out on the playground and torment the weak and smart just like the kids in Billy Collins’ poem? And if my parents’ lies were intended to protect me, what the heck is my brother’s excuse?
It wasn’t just my brother that lied to me though. My dad was the biggest liar when it came to Christmas. “If you go downstairs and Santa is still here, he’ll leave and take every single present with him.” My brother and I would sit obediently at the top of the stairs while my parents went down to assess the situation and to ensure that Santa had in fact left the building. I wouldn’t have gone down those stairs even if the house were on fire, that’s how much I believed in my father’s words. When I would question him on the logistics of Santa, my father had an answer for everything. “He might not eat all the cookies. He probably takes some back to all the elves at the North Pole.” “Well, if the fireplace is on, he’ll use his magic key that lets him open any door in the world.” “Yes, it would be terrible if he lost that key, but I’m sure he’s made plenty of extras.”
My mother’s lies are probably the most memorable…and terrifying. I still get nervous stepping off and on an escalator thanks to this woman. The green glow that appears from below the steps of the escalator? What is that Mom? Oh that? It’s just the escalator monster. It eats a steady and delicious diet of children that forget to tie their shoes or whose pant-legs drag the ground. Up we go! Any time my mother caught me doing something wrong, she’d always say “A little birdie told me you were in here doing something you aren’t supposed to.” Until middle school at least, I felt certain that my mother had a pet bird, a parrot of some sort that she kept hidden somewhere. It would follow me around and then fly back to my mother and squawk, “She’s eating cookies. Beeeooockkk! She’s eating cookies.” For years, I would ransack the closets and file cabinet drawers for signs of his existence: bird-seed, an empty cage, anything. I wanted this damn bird to die.
I know now that most of these lies were told to protect me. My dad was just trying to protect the fun and innocence of Christmas for his kids as long as possible. As a parent, I guess you only have so many “Santa Christmases.” And he was right. Christmas was never the same since the year I found my bike in the basement two weeks before the big day. My dad of course had some logical explanation about Santa making the big deliveries early to keep the sleigh from getting overcrowded, but I knew. It was over. My brother didn’t have to play the game anymore and we slept later that year than ever before. My mother’s lies were all intended to protect me from something. She wanted to keep me off the six-o-clock news as that tragic story of the kid who got sucked into the escalator (or gobbled up by it, to use her language). She didn’t want me to hurt myself by doing things behind her back that she had warned me about. It was effective; that’s for sure.
All of this came about as I was doing some lesson planning during one of our snow days. I came across a poem that I really enjoy reading with my students.
The History Teacher - Billy Collins
Trying to protect his students' innocence
he told them the Ice Age was really just
the Chilly Age, a period of a million years
when everyone had to wear sweaters.
And the Stone Age became the Gravel Age,
named after the long driveways of the time.
The Spanish Inquisition was nothing more
than an outbreak of questions such as
"How far is it from here to Madrid?"
"What do you call the matador's hat?"
The War of the Roses took place in a garden,
and the Enola Gay dropped one tiny atom on Japan.
The children would leave his classroom
for the playground to torment the weak
and the smart,
mussing up their hair and breaking their glasses,
while he gathered up his notes and walked home
past flower beds and white picket fences,
wondering if they would believe that soldiers
in the Boer War told long, rambling stories
designed to make the enemy nod off.
I wonder, if I ever become a parent, what lies will I tell my children to protect them and keep them innocent for as long as possible? At what age am I supposed to stop lying to them? What will they feel when they realize I wasn’t telling them the truth? Do these lies actually protect them or do they go out on the playground and torment the weak and smart just like the kids in Billy Collins’ poem? And if my parents’ lies were intended to protect me, what the heck is my brother’s excuse?
Wow, great. We just read this poem in one of my education classes!
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