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.
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.
I always absolutely hated lying to you about all of the above. I tried so hard to teach all of you to never lie, and everytime a holiday rolled around, what choice did Dad and I have...Thanks for letting Jenny, Steph & Ben hold onto those beliefs for a few more years... Let's remember the good times though... remember when the Hillbrenners (sp?) lined the street with the candle filled milk cartons to lead the way for ... (never mind) ;)
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