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).
