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Lies My Parents Told Me

Kernut the Blond Posted on by

(This post was inspired by Oh Noa’s on lying to her future children. It reminded me of the many lies my parents told us.)

I don’t know about you, but I need some humor while I sort through the Match.com adventures. So today I bring you Lies My Parents Told Me.

1. If you don’t behave I’m going to trade you in for new kids. My Dad said there was a catalog of kids he could trade us for. A catalog of good kids. Chickenbone and I believed this. We were cuter than we were smart. After my father threatened to do this one too many times, we got really worried. We told Mom that Dad planned to get rid of us by trading us in for good kids. After she stopped laughing, Mom told us that he couldn’t do that. Then she laughed some more. When we told Dad that Mom told us the truth, he laughed, too. That is, until he realized the threat was no longer valid.

2. This is going to hurt me more than it will hurt you. Yeah, I’m an adult now and I still don’t buy that crap.

3. We’re divorced. They weren’t. Then they got back together. Then, years later, they got divorced. For real. This time they waited until the minute my father was leaving with suitcases in hand to tell us. Not much time for us to get used to the idea. No time to learn that divorce meant Dad wasn’t going to live with us anymore. A heart-breaking moment for sure. I’m still scarred. And you wondered why I blog. It’s all starting to become clear now, isn’t it?

4. If you don’t eat your vegetables, kids in Africa will starve. Since we really didn’t want the vegetables and the kids in Africa needed them, we asked if we could send them our vegetables in the mail. Mom said no. So we said she shouldn’t buy so many.

5. If you breath with your mouth open you’ll get cancer. Actually, this one came from my paternal grandmother. She said it to my father when he was a kid. I’m pretty sure she started this whole make-shit-up-to-keep-your-kids-in-line thing.

6. Your cat went to Hollywood to be in the movies. Also from same grandmother to my father, after his pet cat passed away. He kept looking for it on TV. He needs a blog, too.

7. If you don’t have sex before you get married, you’ll get 1/3 of the Texas ranch. My maternal grandfather said this to me. When my mother found out years later, she couldn’t believe it. You see, there were a couple other people in line for that inheritance before me, my sister and my cousin – namely my mother and her sister. None of us got it. No, no, not because of the sex before you’re married thing. They sold it for something more manageable in their old age. I’m really glad I didn’t hold out for it.

This is exactly why I won’t have kids. I’d just find myself lying to them.

Come to think of it, I’m not sure my parents have stopped. Huh. I’m sure when they say I shouldn’t have sex before I get married they don’t really mean that.


Comments

Lies My Parents Told Me — 24 Comments

  1. You don’t have to have your own kids in order to enjoy lying to them. Over Christmas, I told my nephews that I spent my childhood hustling air hockey games for snack money.

    • I love it! I will start lying to my nephew immediately. Chickenbone probably won’t approve, so I’ll have to do it on the sly.

  2. Aw, shucks! Thanks for linking to me–glad I inspired you to retell the injustices you suffered as a child. It hurts me more than it hurts you.

    • Damn, you were going to get 1/3 of the ranch, too? That means it was promised to at least six people we now know of. Ah, it was in the middle of nowhere in Texas anyway.

  4. #5 is just weird. I remember some of those lies, but I have made a serious effort to just be straight with my kids. Consequently, they tell me more than most teens tell their mothers.

    • I agree that’s the way to build mutual trust… I was much more open with my stepmother, who was honest with me.

  5. LOVE #4 — I also made the “ship this crap to Africa” suggestion to Dear Sweet Mama, but I didn’t follow up with the shopping suggestion. If I had, I’d probably be typing this from my room, where I would have been ever since…

    • It took us several “eat your vegetables because kids are starving in Africa” prompts before we though of shipping it to them. I think my mother laughed, but tried not to – this being serious and all. We still had to eat okra, and lima beans. Why okra and lima beans?? Could there be two more awful vegetables on the planet? When I got old enough to pick my own vegetables I discovered squash and lettuce and tomatoes. There was a whole world out there I didn’t know existed.

  6. I tell Sean the ugly truth to keep him in line.

    “If you don’t go to school, you have to get a job.”

    You’re not serious!

    “Dude, I’m serious as a car wreck.”

    He loves school.

    • Ahahaha Sean is smarter than I am. My father told me the same thing, but it just made me get better at ditching and forging his signature on notes.

  8. My mother would just straight up tell us she was putting us up for adoption. The worst part? My mother actually was a very good actor. World’s best poker face. We called her bluff once. She got the phone book and started flipping through it. We ate our vegetables (yes, she was going to put us up for adoption because we weren’t eating our vegetables).

    • She must have talked to my dad. Although, my dad didn’t much care if we ate the vegetables or not. He often gave us money for junk food from 7-11. I can’t remember what things we did to warrant “being traded in for good kids”.

  9. I don’t generally lie to my kids, but I often feel like a hypocrite when I tell them something like…..soda is bad for them, but then they see me drinking a coke. Sometimes I even try to time my cough so they don’t hear me cracking one open.
    It’s kind of funny.

    • That is funny! Timing the cough to cracking open the can! HAhahaa

      I forgot to include the Easter Bunny and Santa, but those are pretty common. Chickenbone claims not to tell any other fibs to my nephew, but I suspect she’s telling me one 😉

    • Than you 🙂 I seem to have that effect – always making things sound sexy. It’s not like I’m a sex-starved adolescent. Well, ok, maybe that’s not that far from the truth.

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