I lied to my kids about TV, Santa and lamb. They can thank me later

“The play, being not true, must be in desperate pursuit of truth.” That’s Shakespeare. More accurately … that’s Shakespearean. I made it up.

Lying is art. Lying, being so calculated and purposeful, is perhaps the most delicate and valuable form of literature. Think of the whoppers you tell your kids, your spouse, your boss and yourself to make everyone’s days run peacefully. So much depends on crafting a lie to fit the unique gullibility of its target audience, rendering the dupe eager to believe bespoke bullshit, inviting them in as co-conspirators in the conning of themselves.

And don’t we exult, in that dark grove of the mind where narcissism stares into a puddle of rancid cerebrospinal fluid, when an uncle or an accountant falls for our latest invention. “The dog ate my homework” is the first line in a lifelong magnum opus for those of us who’ve written happy lives using serial mendacity.

Credit: Robin Cowcher

But lies are not for everyone. One should almost be registered or licensed to let rip with balderdash. Many people are quickly entangled and overwhelmed by the art of the lie, and the telling of adjacent and subsequent lies as life-support for the original untruth. These people become distrusted by all and are soon known as desperate coffee shop blowhards.

Lies are like suffrage – a right that cannot be expected to extend to children, for instance. Their frontal cortex is undeveloped, and they are so eagerly corruptible and self-centred that if they were given the vote, we’d soon have Fanta running from our taps. Their minds can’t tell the difference between a hurtful slander and a salutary untruth.

That’s why all good parents punish their children for telling lies, and all good parents lie to their children incessantly, reflexively, responsibly and joyously. I told my children very little truth, and it fitted them nicely for the world. More than two-thirds of everything I ever said to them ought to have been fact-checked or dismissed out of hand.

Even now, with them grown and gone, I’m terrified my daughters will discover park rangers don’t text to tell me a playground is closing and we must get out pronto. And that there is no world record for being the fastest at putting away toys. I told them that lamb, the baby sheep, and lamb, the food, were not connected in any way, that people ran out of words, so they used “lamb” twice. When they found out that wasn’t as true as some other things that actually are, they were outraged – but they were also rosy-cheeked and bursting with iron.

I suppose a brief sadness accompanies every revelation that your old man has fooled you again. They must have been sad when they found out that TVs don’t run out of batteries. Perplexed when they realised that an ice-cream van playing Greensleeves isn’t crying out for help because it’s run out of ice-cream. Astounded to find that their favourite TV characters don’t have to go to bed at the same time they do. Angry, and relieved, to discover that long showers aren’t killing Nemo.

And I hope, when they finally realise that their beloved dog Keef didn’t decide to go and live with children who ate their greens without yodeling like whipped hippos every night, they also grasp that I used Keef’s untimely death for good, and that vegetables form part of a complete diet.

I guess they know by now that a shotgun fired at 9pm on December 31 followed by some hollering and hugs from their father doesn’t really signal the new year. I guess they’ve twigged that the fireworks that woke them in the wee hours were the legitimate year’s end. And I’m certain they’ve intuited by now that talking after lights-out doesn’t wake the dead.

I hope they don’t despise me for using Santa like God. Telling them he was in their heads, eavesdropping on their thoughts and they must think exactly as I tell them to if they want the pay-off of a sack of dolls, hairbands, stickers and pencils at year’s end.

It must have been a great leap towards psychological freedom when someone explained that Santa didn’t exist and wasn’t, therefore, ogling their inner appetites with disgust. He was a valuable lie, in his godly way, that fellow. And he shows the best lies are true in the way the best prayers are true – both are fancy ways of making a wish, a glimpse of how things ought to be.

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