Thursday 27 August 2015

Lies Your Parents Told You


Growing up I was always encouraged by my parent not to lie.  All kids’ lie a little bit or exaggerates the truth with their imaginations (kind of like what men still do today).  The one thing a kid never expects is for their parents to lie to them.  The lies my parents told me were far worse than any lie I ever told them.  For example, my lies where more disguisers of the truth, me not telling them I was out on the street at 13 years old pissed off my face was not knowledge that they needed to know.  Their lies on the other hand pretty much scarred me for life.

 

The biggest and most treacherous of lies was the myth of Santa Clause.  To this day I have never forgiven them for this one.  This lie presented me with three different feelings;

Happiness – there was a jolly man who came to visit the house once a year and dished out free toys to all of the good kids.
Fear – there was a big fat man who broke into my house every year and ate all of my cookies and drunk all of my milk.

Having a conscience about things I did – I was always told that only well behave kids got toys and all of the bad ones on the ‘naughty list’ were given a lump of coal.  I seemed to be on the naught list a lot during the year because I was a very stubborn kid and always loved an argument.  Mum and dad obviously saw that presenting me with a lump of coal for Christmas might not startle me too much so they went in with the big guns for their next threat.  All bad children will have to go to midnight mass on Christmas Eve....they got me, they got me good!



 

There was nothing I hated more in my life than going to church, never mind having to go so late at night at the age I was.  I fell asleep all of the time and mum had to keep waking me, surely this was as much of a punishment for her as it was for me? 

 

The year I found out that there was no Santa I was about 8 and we were playing hide and go seek.  I went to hide in my parent’s wardrobe and there were all my presents. 

 

The next lie was the monsters in the closet.  Most kids are scared of monsters in their closets but it was never really something we were scared of as kids, my sister and I shared a room so we always had each other.  As we shared a room we were always up and about and one way dad would get us back into bed was by telling us there was a monster in the closet that would come for us if we weren’t sleeping.  Needless to say we pretty much shit out pants with the thought of that, our dad was warning his precious daughters of this awful monster and how to avoid it. 

 

Around this age my dad let us watch a lot of horror movies.  I remember we were very young when we watched A Nightmare on Elm Street; we rented the VHS from the movie shop.  When we needed a bathroom break during the film dad would pause it and my sister and I would run up the stairs to the loo.  Dad being dad he would shout up after us ‘Watch out Freddy doesn’t get you’.  Naturally we then would call mum up to the top of the stairs so that she could watch out for Freddy in case he did come for us.

 

When I realised there were no real monsters a while later I used this to my advantage.  One night dad let us watch Poltergeist (I really have to question his parenting skills) and my sister was terrified of the clown so I used this on her one night.  We went to bed and she was most likely bulling me so I told her I seen the clown under her bed.  Scared as anything she jumped into her bed and hid under the covers but she is older and should know better so I take no responsibility for this.  For a long time after telling her this she would always take a run and jump into bed in case the clown got her.  I also told her that Jaws lived under her bed and she believed that too (she won’t admit that now).



 

 

 

 

 

 

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