Do not let your child read this.

There comes a day in your life when you will realize that, for a large majority of your childhood, adults were usually lying to you.

Here is an example.

When I was young - probably about eight years old - I used to draw all the time. I spent nearly every waking moment with a pencil in my hand, drawing at each and every opportunity that I could possibly find to fit it into my schedule. However, I wasn't the most imaginative child, so instead of creating monsters and princesses and kittens and dinosaurs from my mind, I would more often than not just copy them from somewhere else. I was particularly fond of drawing Ernie and the Tasmanian Devil. I would be so proud of myself when I finished one of these sketches, and I would find the closest parent and I would say "LOOK WHAT I DID." They would ooh and ahh over what was probably the 93rd Ernie they'd seen that week and they would say "Did you trace that? You traced that, didn't you?" and I would swell with pride when I could say to them "NO WAY BUCKO, I DREW THIS BAD BOY, TRACING IS FOR INFANTS." They would act as though I had blown their minds, and I would then be convinced that I was the best artist of all time.

Thinking back on those Ernies that I drew, I think: holy crap, those things had to have been garbage. I mean really. I was eight. Do a Google image search for "eight year old art" (no quotes. don't use quotes.) and you will be bombarded with photos of one specific young child (Keiron Williamson) - because to be a good artist at the age of eight is so unlikely a feat that, if you manage to achieve it, you will single-handedly monopolize the results of a Google query. I know what you're saying, though. "Cindy, Google didn't exist until you were fourteen! Surely you would have been the Keiron Williamson of your generation!" Well, I know that it's easy to think that I would have been that incredible of a child, but it sadly was not so.

So, instead, I spent a majority of my childhood drawing Ernies with molesty smiles and carefree stares, thinking that I was the eight-year-old, female van Gogh of Woburn, Massachusetts. I thought this because adults lied to me. Thanks, adults.

Another example.

My family used to vacation at my great aunt's house from time to time. Everyone would be there - my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. We made a thing of it. One year, probably around the same time that I was drawing Ernies to prep for what I was sure would be my inevitable journey to Louvre school or something, my family took one of these vacations. The grown-ups would sit around and drink and sing and laugh late into the night, and, being the oldest grandchild, I was sometimes allowed to join. (I mean, I was allowed to join in the singing and laughing, not the drinking. My parents are awesome, but they weren't child-endangerment awesome.) On one of these nights where I was able to stay up, Bette Midler's The Wind Beneath My Wings was the song of choice. Beaches was only a year or two old at that point, and it was the only song anyone wanted to listen to. I remember that we had a cassette single of it, and it was my job to rewind it once it ended so that we could listen to it again. By the end of the night, I knew most of the words to the song, and I was singing along as loud as I could. Then, at the end of that night, my aunt gave me the tape. She told me that my singing was wonderful, and that if I could learn all of the words by the next time I saw her, we could record the song together. Holy crap, that was the coolest thing anyone had ever said to me.

So I took that tape home and I learned that song so well that I could sing it in my sleep. (Oh god, imagine sleep singing? Terrifying. I didn't do that.) I was certain that, during my summers off from MOMA-tech, I would be touring the country with my aunt as the world's first #1 aunt-niece Bette Midler cover duo. However, any time I tried to mention that I knew the song, I was brushed off. So now I was an artistic savant with unprecedented musical prowess, and yet still for some reason I just went to regular school and did not have a million dollars and was not famous. Again, hey adults, thanks.

Last example. And I think you all knew it was coming. (Seriously, if you are a child and you are reading this, stop right now.)

Santa. Dear mother of god, fucking Santa Claus. For some reason, I found out about Santa at almost exactly the same time as all of this other stuff. Eight was a pretty lie-filled year for me, I guess. One dreary afternoon, I sat with my younger sister Jenny playing video games. (Probably Mario, because what the hell else would it have been?) She told me that in school recently, someone had told her that Santa wasn't real. Well, I wasn't having any of that. I was eight years old, and Santa was real, and so help me god if some whiny asshole was going to tell me and my six year old sister any differently. So I paused the game and I looked at her and I said,

"Listen to me right now. Santa is real and that kid is stupid. Do not listen to him, he is an idiot, why would he even say that, holy crap."

Or something like that. But I remember getting very heated about it. My sister agreed, and once we were both satisfied that our lives were not destroyed because Santa Clause was of course real, we resumed our game. However, only moments later, my mother called into my bedroom for me. I left Jenny to play the game and went to find my mother. I found her in the bathroom waiting for me. She sat down on the edge of the tub to bring herself to my level, and she told me that she'd heard me telling Jenny that Santa was real. She told me that she thought that was very nice of me, and she asked me why it was that I was so sure that Santa existed.

Suddenly, I felt confused. I grasped in my head for reasons that I was certain that this large, fat man was letting himself into my home once a year to give me gifts. Every time I thought of one, I was instantly able to rationalize that it wasn't necessarily proof. There was that time that I heard him playing with the keyboard that I got - but I guess that could have just been my mom. But the cookies were always gone, and the reindeer carrot. Well, I mean, my dad knows how to eat food.

As if that wasn't bad enough, I started to think of things that actually worked against me in the case of Real Santa vs. Bullshit Santa. I didn't have a chimney, but even on snowy Christmases, there were no boot prints on the rug. I never heard anything on the roof, like in all of those songs and movies. And the trash. The year that I got my bike for Christmas, I found the bike box and instructions in the backyard. My parents told me that this just meant that Santa had assembled the bike for me before leaving. Dear god, I was an idiot.

The news hit me hard. My mother never had to say the words "Santa isn't real" to me - all she'd had to do was plant the seed of doubt in my mind. But then suddenly it all made sense. I remember crying. Quietly at first, but then loud, violent sobbing. I think that I even curled up in a ball on the ground at one point while my mother just told me over and over again that it would be okay. (In hindsight, big thanks to my mom for putting up with me as a child, I was pretty neurotic.) And then my brain just started unraveling.

"Wait, wait. Santa isn't real. Easter Bunny?"
"...no."
"Tooth Fairy?!"
"...no, not her either."

Eventually, I got up off of the floor. I took a deep breath, composed myself, and went back to play more Mario. When Jenny found out a couple of years later, I was there, and she took it incredibly well. She woke up in the middle of the night during a roadtrip to South Carolina for Easter. Somehow, she woke up wondering if the Easter Bunny was real, and my parents told her then that he was not. I told her that it was okay to cry - that I had - but instead she just shrugged it off and went back to sleep. Apparently she was slightly less neurotic than I was.

So there you have it. Three prime examples of how lying to children is an epidemic in the country. Shameful as it may be, we can at least find solace in the fact that the lying comes to an end once you reach adulthood.

Wait.

The End of the World

In August of 1991, I turned nine years old. I don't remember much about that birthday, but the week that followed is another story.

The news was on in my house constantly that week. There is a chance that something incredibly profound and newsworthy happened at that time in history, and there's a chance that nothing did. However, here is what did happen: Hurricane Bob.

How can you even feel threatened by a hurricane with such a friendly, happy-go-lucky sort of name? "Oh, Bob? He's a great guy. He gave me five dollars one time for no reason, and also he mows my lawn for me when I'm not feeling well. Also, he hugs orphans I heard." See? You cannot even be worried about a man with such a name, so there is definitely no fearing a windstorm named as such. However, people were crazy. It was my very first hurricane, and while everyone else in the city was in a panic, I was staring out the window - waiting, and excited.

I was excited for a hurricane? Of course! My life was so average, but here was an event that was sure to shake things up a bit! High winds? Thunderstorms? Power outages? Famine and looting? Sign me up! At nine years old, I could not have been more excited for the carnage and destruction that this storm promised to bring.

There were multiple trips for supplies that took place, and I made sure I was taken along each time. Mom went to the store to buy candles? I was there. Dad went to the store to buy batteries for the flashlights? Yes please, I will go to that. It didn't matter how mundane the task, I wanted to be a part of it. More than anything, I wanted to be out among the people who were preparing for what seemed like the end of the world. The vibe was intense, and it was like nothing I had ever felt before. I couldn't get enough of it.

The day of the hurricane's arrival, I wanted to hang up signs that said "Welcome, Hurricane Bob! Please destroy the hell out of things so that I can appreciate this panic a bit longer!" I wanted to craft some sort of machine that would intensify the storm, causing it to wreak more havoc than everyone was already certain it would. I didn't want people to die, nor did I want homes to be demolished - I just wanted things to be exciting.

My aunt was living with us at this time, and she said to me the most perfect thing anyone could ever have said.

"Cindy, I have to go to the store - do you want to come?"

Oh, dearest aunt. Do I want to come with you to the store in the middle of a hurricane? I think that you know that I do want that more than I have ever wanted anything in the world. So we left the house, climbed into the car, and drove to CVS. It was raining a bit as we drove along, and street lights swayed in the wind slightly, but I said to my aunt,

"This doesn't really seem very bad."

I feel like most adults would worry when sensing that their nine year old niece is disappointed with the lack of weather-related destruction, but my aunt was amazing. All she said to me was,

"Don't worry. This is just the calm before the storm."

Suddenly, I was reinvigorated! "Don't worry," she said! This day still had hope! The hurricane winds would come, and they would do what I wanted, and they would make everything worth it. So we went home, and I sat back, and I waited.

I wanted to sit near the window to watch the frenzy of weather in my back yard, but my parents were responsible and made sure that I stayed away from any dangerously breakable glass areas. And so, I stayed buried deep inside my house, listening for the wind, for the thunder, for the sound of trees crashing around me. But really, I didn't hear any of that. In fact, I didn't hear much of anything at all. I ended up going to bed, convincing myself that when I peeked out the windows in the morning, the destruction I'd been hoping for would be apparent.

Unfortunately, when I woke up the next day, I looked outside and everything was... normal. Yes, there were a few downed tree limbs, but our shed was still standing! Our cars had not flipped over in the night. There were no gaping holes in our roof from trees that had met their match. My bike hadn't even been knocked off the kickstand.

I'd hoped for a storm that would bend trees at ninety degree angles, with downpours of rain and thunder to shake the earth. Instead I got light rain, subpar winds, and trees that were sort of just irritated that they were being bothered.

We had the mess of the aftermath cleaned up in an afternoon, and just like that, it was as though Hurricane Bob had never even happened. Life returned to normal. People in stores were calm again, the news went back to being boring, and street lights stopped swaying. The destruction I had hoped for was never to be.

I guess that's what you get from a hurricane named Bob.

Dead Trees

When I was a little kid, I was weird. Like, I mean. Everyone thinks they were weird as a child, at least a little bit. But really, I was strange as hell. I did unusual, probably unhealthy things. For instance, I liked to play Suicide Barbie, which was a game that consisted of finding the most creative ways I could think of to bring Barbie to an early demise. (Family favorite was Barbie Corvette off the top bunk.) I liked to use the encyclopedia to draw states and their counties in full detail. Also, I once got in trouble for drawing a picture of a naked woman who was peeing, except her pee was going up a straight line into her own mouth.

But that's not what we're talking about here.

Anyhow, my family moved into a beautiful house when I was five years old, and we were lucky enough to live there until I was about twelve. The house had three bedrooms, an enormous kitchen, a playroom, and - most excitingly - an epic backyard complete with large and explorable wooded area. As soon as I was old enough, I was in those woods all the time. My sisters and I would play hide and seek, or tag, or we would use one of the fallen trees as a balance beam and play gymnasts.

However, those were not the best games of all. Oh no. The best woods game started in December, even though it was far too cold to play outside just yet.

Every Christmas, my family was lucky enough to celebrate in style with a real, live Christmas tree. We would stand it up in our living room and decorate it while we listened to holiday music and drank eggnog or cider. We would pile gifts underneath it, and my sisters and I would anxiously await Christmas morning when we would finally be able to gather around the tree and open our gifts together. No matter what we received, it was always a special time of warmth and love.

In the following days and weeks, though, the tree would start to brown - and eventually, my father would dismantle our holiday display and haul the tree into the woods. It would slowly die under the snow of winter, withering away until it was merely a pile of branches and dead needles.

Spring would soon come, and the sun would do its best to break through the treetops and melt away the remnants of snow. Once all of the snow was gone and the woods were a bit drier, it was finally time for the best woods game in the land. It was time to play:

Poor people.

I know, you're already thinking, "What the hell? Poor people? That's awful." Listen, I know it is, but who cares, it was fucking awesome. There was one single rule to playing poor people, and it was this: pretend to be poor with whatever you can find in the woods. Thanks to this rule, the first game of the year was always the best.

That's right, you guessed it. The dead tree! It was time to play poor people Christmas, which was just like celebrating real Christmas all over again, except that there were no real gifts and also it was sort of disturbing. Generally, the game started with me locating the rotting pine carcass from the previous holiday season and hoisting it up against an actual living tree trunk. It would almost always sort of just sag towards the ground, and I was certain to lose a good number of needles in the process, but eventually it would stay standing! At this point, the real fun began.

Decorating Poor People Christmas tree was the highlight of my year. In December, there are boxes of glass ornaments and garland and lights to use to make things as festive as possible - but in the woods in April, all you have is your imagination and hopefully some trash. I recall using old single-serving Doritos bags, rusted beer cans, soggy newspapers, and plastic soda can rings. Decorating that tree was more important than decorating the real Christmas tree, because everything we used was creative and no one had ever used such a thing to decorate for the holidays before.

Finally, once the tree was decorated, it was time to have Poor People Christmas morning. Unfortunately, since we were supposed to be poor, we weren't allowed to give each other gifts. So, instead, my two sisters and I would stand around the tree with sad looks on our faces, and we would say things like:

"Well, maybe we'll be able to afford gifts next year."

or

"At least we have this beautiful tree that someone was careless enough to throw away into our woods."

or, my favorite,

"I know we aren't supposed to give gifts, but I got you each a rock. I know it's not much, but it's all I could manage."

And that's it. Eventually, one of us would start laughing at the absurdity of things, and then we would all collapse into fits of giggles over how ridiculous we were being. It didn't occur to us then how heartless and terrible we were being, nor does it occur to us now to feel bad about it as adults. We were children, and we were having the time of our lives. We were, of course, lucky to have a real Christmas, and gifts, and a house, and nice things.

Really though, I couldn't have asked for anything better than playing Poor People.