I told a LOT of lies when I was a kid.
And I can actually remember a lot of them. And some of them have the best stories behind them.
I think my favorite is this:
My dad told me when I was about 11 that we were Irish. Now I didn't know what this meant at the time. I mean I did... but for some reason I saw it as something special. Like not many people were Irish. (Pretty sure almost everyone has Irish in them, the Irish are like rabbits.) So when I entered a new school I decided then was a good time to try on my Irish heritage for size.
I was sitting in the locker rooms one day during 6th grade and I was talking to a couple of other girls... and we started talking about... something I can't remember what. Girls talk about all kinds of things in locker rooms... anyways I mentioned that I was Irish.
To which one of the girls asked, "What does that mean?"
"Well it means that I am descended from the Kelly Clan." I responded with perfect ease. I had researched the Irish pretty heavily after my dad told me about it... and by research I mean googled it.
Of course all the girls wanted to know what that meant, so I obliged.
"You see the O'Kelly clan ruled over Ireland for a long time, so I'm descended from a number of Irish royal families."
All of them were impressed with that. And asked what that meant.
"I'm a princess, my real name is Julia Morgan something something Bor'de'can Kelly [Insert Real Last Name*]." And thus began the rumor that I was an Irish princess.
I love to make stuff up.
The second of my favorite lies would have to be one my father caught me in.
Sometimes I think I'm smarter than I am. Or maybe that I'm more cunning than I am... or something, I haven't decided which of these is correct yet.
But this is one of those times.
In Kansas City it likes to snow. We'll go for months without snow or just a little spittle and then all of a sudden the gates of heaven open up and half a foot will drop. This time we had just returned from Mexico and I had started middle school again.
My best friend Victoria lived down the street from the school and I didn't know if I should go home with her since our vice-principal had said that we can't go home with other people without a note. (This was in the time before idiot children had cellphones. Or should I say "the time when idiot paranoid parents gave their idiot children cellphones".)
So stupid me asked if I could call my dad to pick him up because a bus didn't deliver children to my home.
My teacher thought I was stupid and continued to argue with me about whether or not a bus could deliver me home.
Of course what I mentioned was that we had moved outside of the district line, meaning that I would have had to go to a different school and my dad didn't want me to go through the hassle of switching schools yet again. (We had just moved back from Mexico in the middle of the school year.) So he was driving me every day to school and picking me up because a bus couldn't take me (of course I didn't start riding the bus until my Freshman year in highschool... and that only lasted a year).
That's when the poop hit the fan.
I hurriedly attempted to lie to cover up what I had said. I backpedaled, trying to explain what I had just said.
"I-I-uhm I mean... I need to call my dad because he's outside of the line." I tried to cover up... of course all I did was make more trouble for myself.
So I lied that my dad had kicked me out and that I was living with my best friend so I had to go home with her.
Now if you know my dad, you know that he would rather dissect himself than kick me out of the house. But this lady didn't know that.
And yet again I had to backpedal.
Eventually father was called, we got in trouble, and I'm pretty convinced my dad most likely locked me in my room for a week after what happened.
My third favorite lie, is not as elaborate. But it is elaborately convoluted.
Laptops were the coolest things in the world when they came out. And there was this girl, who we shall call... Megan... for now. And she and I had a bit of a rivalry. My dad was wealthy, her dad was wealthy we just couldn't help but compete.
She said she had two computers. One desktop in the sitting room and one laptop in her dad's office.
So I mentioned that I had five or six, and all of them were hidden around the house. There was one in my dad's study, one in my room, one under my dad's pillow, one under my bed, and one downstairs or something like that. In reality my dad and I each had a laptop. Mine was a dirty great blue Toshiba, which was the best at the time.
...let's just say that this came back to haunt me later in life... since girls are catty and they never forget anything. I was always trying to cover up for my not having a mom to take me shopping.
I mean certainly my dad took me to get clothes... but he's my dad. He has the same attention span for shopping that a goldfish has for... well... anything.
I would claim things I never could. In fact most people didn't know I didn't have a mother because I covered so well, I came up with stories about her and what she and I had done...
When in reality the only thing she had done with me is birth me.
Sometimes I think I fell into the same trap a lot of kids do. I thought that lying would get me attention. I thought that negative attention was the same as positive attention.
Which it's not...
EDITED (10/31): I realized this morning that I had cursed in this post! So I took it out! There should be no cursing in my posts!
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