Have you ever lied to your kids?
Shut up. Of course you have.
And I don’t mean those little lies you tell because the truth is too complicated to explain, like “That cookie jar is just STUCK, honey, sorry,” or “The swimming pool closes after your nap time,” or “Can’t give you that, soda will give you cancer.”
I mean REALLY lied. As in when-she-gets-old-enough-to-understand-she’ll-kill-you lied.
It wasn’t until I was an adult and graduated from college that my mother finally admitted to my brother and I that when we were young she would spike our fruit smoothies with tofu and wheat germ. Those risqué Mad Magazines really didn’t get lost, they ended up in the trash. (But not all of ‘em, thankfully.) And those “beef sticks” we loved as kids? Liver.
So you know the musical ice cream truck that invades neighborhoods like a Birther at a town hall meeting? We tried to nip that in the bud as soon as we could by borrowing a punch line from one of my favorite The Far Side cartoons. It’s not an ice cream truck, honey. It’s the liver & onions truck! It toodles through the block bringing strips of medium-rare organ meat and raw onions to all the neighborhood girls and boys!
What? … Beats me why so many kids chase after it. Liver. Yuck! Nice music, though.
The big one knows this truck only by the liver & onions truck moniker and hence has never shown any inclination to chase after it like a dog chasing traffic. But she still gets excited whenever it comes around.
You see the flaw in the plan, though, don’t you? Sure you do. Imagine her playing with friends in the neighborhood and the liver & onions truck goes by. Hey, she shouts to her friends, it’s the liver & onions truck! Then her friends all laugh at her, tell her it’s really ice cream, she’s crushed, hurt by her parents’ betrayal, and ends up relaying how awful her Papa was during her childhood to her therapist 30 years later. I can see it as sure as the sun rises in the east.
The kicker to this story? She’s lactose-intolerant.
Oh, she’s SO gonna kill me when she finds out.
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I think she might kill you as soon as she learns to read
Dear Dusty,
I think your blog shows you have considerable facility as a writer. You’re a real humorist. Have you ever thought of sending something to the New Yorker magazine? Take a peek at their Shouts and Murmurs humor section and see if your style wouldn’t fit with their accent on things.
And I, and I think everybody here, enjoyed Norah and Levi immensely today. It was nice having them at my birthday party.
Cheers,
Don