Lies We Were Told As Kids
October 23, 2022
At some point in your childhood, an adult has definitely lied to you: whether it was gum staying in your stomach for years if you were to swallow it, chocolate milk comes from brown cows, there are certain mythical beings like the Tooth Fairy or the Easter Bunny, eating carrots will help you see in the dark, or that if you make a face it will get stuck like that. These lies were harmless of course; they were told to serve a purpose and for the most part they worked. If parents didn’t want their kids to do something, or were just annoyed by what they were doing, there was a myth they could tell to make them stop. Sometimes lies were told for the purpose of keeping their children’s childhood blissful. However, I think some of the lies parents were telling their kids were for their own amusement.
Senior Hanna Howell is a little bit of a picky eater now, but when she was younger, she was even pickier. Her diet consisted mainly of chicken nuggets and mac & cheese as a child. Her mom desperately wanted her to branch out and eat other, normal food, so she came up with a lie to tell her eight year old daughter. Hanna’s mom would make pork chops and tell her that they were pieces of chicken. Hanna, trusting her mom, would eat them and not know the difference. This lasted until she was about twelve years old when one of her parents eventually told her. Hanna isn’t too mad and looking back, she thinks it is a bit funny and thinks that lying to kids is sometimes a good thing.
“Everyone should lie to kids,” said Howell
Junior Abby Hawk shares a story that is a little more traumatic than Howell’s. Mr. Hawk has been telling this same lie to his kids year after year and it causes some anxiety within his daughter Abby. As the family would eat dinner, Mr. Hawk would tell the girls that certain foods they ate would give them chest hair. Abby believed him every time he would tell her and all of her sisters this.
Abby said, “He would tell me this while I ate my dinner and I would cry because I know that girls didn’t get chest hair and I thought he was being serious.”
Abby has mixed feelings on whether she would tell a lie to kids when she is older. She said she would lie to a little boy, but lying to a little girl, especially a lie like she was told, is too far and wouldn’t lie to one.
One of the most gullible seniors is Evan Chess. He shows that you are never too old to be lied to. Last year, a friend of Chess, Marcus Ortiz, made a fictional story about a mariachi band and convinced Chess that it was real. It was his fourth period APUSH class when Ortiz walked in and complained about getting no sleep due to a very loud mariachi band in his neighborhood. He told Chess that the band was going door to door playing songs, and Ortiz couldn’t believe that Chess didn’t hear or see them since the two of them live in the same neighborhood. Chess believed him because of how persistent Ortiz was and was dumbfounded that he missed the band
“He just kept telling me the same story over and over again,” said Chess.
Chess didn’t say whether he would lie to a kid, but my best guess is that he would and probably already has.
In the future, if you are bored or a child isn’t cooperating, I would consider telling a little white lie. It can’t hurt them too much.
