Your parents are liars. I know this because I’m a parent and I’m a liar. If I didn’t expand that fact to apply to all parents I would be guilty of thinking myself peculiarly special. Since it’s inconvenient to do that in this case… your parents are liars too.
Parenthood makes even the most upright of us into serial liars. We lie to our kids, we lie about our kids, and the most degenerate of us even lie about whether we have kids. “Is Santa real?” “What are those dogs doing?” “Who is that lady Daddy?” “Who is that man Mommy?” “Daddy, what was that man doing to Mommy while you were at work last night?” These and a million other questions from our children elicit bald-faced lies from us.
Not content to have lied to our children, we take it further and proceed to lie about our children. Our 7-year-old magically becomes 6 again at the movie theatre ticket window. Our son’s goal at his soccer game turns into 3 when we tell the story to that woman at work who’s always yammering on about her kid’s accomplishments. Our child gets sick about twice a year, but our personnel department thinks he’s damn near got leukemia. You see where I’m going with this.
I’m not even going to get into the people who lie about having kids. That’s another issue entirely.
You know I’m telling the truth because at some point in your life, every last one of you has had the revelation about your parents and thought, “Those lying bastards!” You only really forgive them their lies when you finally have children and realize that you probably shouldn’t throw stones from the doorway of your newly built glass house.
