London Calling…

Wjy do people bother? I honestly don’t understand why anyone lies to a kid. All this bullshit about childhood magic being shattered by growing up is only relevent if you’ve told the kid a bunch of crap in the first place. If you’ve never been lied to as a kid then there is no shocking truth that disappoints you. No illusions to be shattered. And it isn’t traumatic if you never believed in Santa Claus, I know someone who never got the lie, and never thought they had missed out. How can you miss an illusion you never had?

My parents have told me 3 lies in my life. They are Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, and “You can have a puppy�.

When I was a very young kid, my parents told me there was a Santa Claus. Naturally, I believed them. Years later when I went to primary school, this was contradicted by my peers, so I went back to my parents for confirmation, and again they told me that this person did in fact exist. I will concede that I had younger brothers and sisters for whom the fantasy was still very much alive, and to some extent, this makes their unwillingness to admit the truth understandable. But I wasn’t an irresponsible child, they could have taken me aside and explained.

As far as I was concerned, in my whole life, my parents had at this point never lied to me. I had accepted their word as fact, and every question I asked straight out I generally received an answer to. During my reasonably early childhood I once asked my mother to explain sex to me, and she did. Of course, I didn’t understand it very well, and left the conversation with the vague impression that it involved urine. Nonetheless, she answered. So the idea that they would bullshit me about something so unimportant seemed ridiculous. At the same time it didn’t seem as ridiculous as a man in a red suit climbing down several billion chimneys simultaneously.

The issue went unresolved in my mind for years, I couldn’t fathom why my mother wouldn’t tell me the truth. I knew that she was lying, and she knew that I knew. But she just got annoyed whenever I brought it up. Eventually she said something along the lines of “of course not�. So I asked why on earth she hadn’t just told me that long ago. To which she replied that I wasn’t old enough. Now, I may not have been a normal kid, I sure as hell hope I’m not a normal adult. But the first thing I thought was “What age do I have to be before they tell me God doesn’t exist either?�

After that, my parents were no longer entirely trustworthy. The tooth fairy façade I tested myself, by just not telling them once when I lost a tooth. The puppy thing was a platitude so that we would move to limerick when I was 11 without going crazy over how horrible it would be to leave our friends, and was soon discovered to be an empty promise. In total, I suppose 3 lies is a pretty low score for the average childhood. 3 that I recall, anyway. Perhaps there were more. And they did have a positive effect in a way. Not because they made my childhood special, but because they made me realise my parents were not infallible.

I understand the argument that children should have a magical fantasy world with a santa claus and fairies and all that rot. I understand why parents attempt to heighten the experience of Christmas with the addition of the supernatural. But I wouldn’t choose to do it. And I would have preferred to have known the truth from the beginning. Ignorance is bliss, and it’s still not worth it. Which boils down to my essential point:

I would rather be right than happy. At least I know I am capable of being right.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 24th, 2006 at 9:51 am and is filed under Rant. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.