The Lie

Sometimes, parents lie to their kids. It happens. You know, "Your face will freeze like that," "They're out of cookies at the grocery store," that kind of thing. Yesterday, we told Semmes his first lie: that alligators live in the sewer drains.

We were on a walk and he was eating a banana. He had rubbed a banana peel all over his car seat the day before, and it had to be cleaned. So I didn't want the same thing to happen again. Brad took the peel away and went to throw it in the storm drain. Semmes was crying and carrying on about "his banana peel." So I told him that we were feeding it to the alligators that lived in the storm drain. For the rest of the walk, every time we passed a storm drain, he would point and say, "agilators (his cute word for alligators) live there." I was kinda hoping he would forget about this, but he's STILL talking about it. And how alligators live in swamps, ponds, and storm drains. I've scarred him for life.