My friend is so good at lying to her children, I'm not even sure she knows she is doing it. When her youngest requests a trip to the toy store, she does not miss a beat. "Closed today!" she says. Her tone has the sing-song confidence of a true professional. "The toy people close on Mondays. Some other time!"
Can this be accurate? I've never heard that our local toy store shuts down on Mondays.
I try to adopt my friend's tone when I torpedo a beach trip. It's just too cold outside. "Guys," I say to my kids, "the mayor has walled off the beach today. There was a toxic dump. We'll need to go next week."
I'm not sure how I have failed--but I have failed. My son begins screaming. My daughter has been dreaming of throwing a wad of grass into the ocean--God knows why--and her tears begin to flow, and flow, and flow.
We head to the beach; the consolation prize is that I can listen to a new podcast about JonBenet Ramsey. The father, John Ramsey, seems to be doing a "renaissance tour"; like Britney Spears or Janet Jackson, he wants us to take a critical look at how the media once treated him. We can feel newly guilty, given our enlightened 2025 attitudes toward bias and power. I'm open to this, but I can't help but think, What if John Ramsey is--and always has been--part of a coverup? Perhaps if I myself weren't regularly lying to little kids, I could become a more credulous listener.
At the beach, my daughter experiments with her wad of grass, my son gets slightly wet, and the wind throws sand in our faces. The entire visit seems to last approximately twenty minutes.
Stopping by the ice cream stand, my daughter is momentarily pleased with her chocolate treat, but she soon becomes distracted by my husband's Italian sausage. "I want one!" she shouts. I lie that there simply isn't time--but, falsely, I promise (promise!) a sausage on our next family outing.
Harmony is restored, I think? I breathe deeply. The flop sweat runs from my hairline; it falls on my nose, my cheeks, my eyes....
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