Kids Lying

If you have kids, or spend time with kids, you already know that they lie their little butts off. Kids will lie even if they aren't actually in trouble. You can ask two siblings, "aww who painted this pretty picture?" and a sudden outburst of "SHE DID IT!...NO SHE DID IT!" will occur. Until of course they realize that you are not mad, at which point they will start to tell you that they did it all by themselves, etc.

My own nephews and nieces happen to be master liars. I've been told that once, my sister and brother in law came downstairs in the morning, following a trail of blue puddles of paint, to find the youngest daughter naked, and covered in blue, smearing a large circle of blue all over the kitchen floor. When they finally reached the source of all the blue, she proceeded to point at her perfectly clean sister and say "Bridget did it!". Now that is some very smooth lying. Don't get me wrong, her sister has her fair share of schemes and plots as well; however, being the older one, she has become much better about covering her tracks. For instance, I once went half a day of babysitting before finding several empty banana peels in the trash can, a banana covered knife in the sink, and some soap spilled on the counter and into the sink. The explanation behind this: When I babysit for the weekend, I usually try to wake up when they do, but end up falling back asleep for a half hour or so. Upon seeing that I have fallen asleep for all eternity, the girls decide that they have been orphaned, and have no choice but to take matters into their own tiny, but capable hands. They sneak downstairs, pull a chair up to the counter, get a couple of bananas and a knife from who knows where, and make themselves breakfast. Bridget knows that if I come downstairs to this, she will be doomed to stand in the corner for at least 20 seconds until I inevitably feel bad and let her off the hook. So she throws the peels into the trash can, pulls a chair up to the sink, gets out the sponge, dumps some soap on the knife, and starts scrubbing. She also tries her best to wipe the banana off the counter as well. Satisfied with herself, she brings her sister back upstairs and pretends they have been there the whole time. When finally confronted, she smoothly informs me that Chloe was getting in trouble this morning. Did I mention that they are 2 and 3?

My other sister's boys may possibly be worse liars than their cousins, but are much more dedicated to the art of lying. After an hour of being scolded for lying, and replying with "I'm not lying!" over and over again, I once had to inform my 6 or 7 year old nephew that I, myself, had spent most of my life lying to my own parents, so that is how I knew he was lying. He wasn't sure what to say to that one, but I'm sure he still denied the lie...which would of course be lying again.

The third set of nephews and nieces are basically angels who, if they have lied, probably confessed in shame a minute later. They've been told on more than one occasion, I'm sure, not to tell their parents that I, or one of their other cool, young aunts or uncles gave them ice cream or let them watch a show they weren't supposed to be watching. This backfired every time with us being chewed out the next day after they informed their parents that they were told not to tell. Of course this is the way it should be. I'm not complaining. Though I haven't spent as much time with them lately, so they may have developed the ability to lie by now. I will set a trap for them and report back.

The other siblings' children are animals and can not tell lies, though they try so hard to speak the human language.

Sneaky Tag

Sneaky tag was a game my older siblings created. It's a cross between hide and seek, freeze tag, and a horror movie.
This game is played strictly outside the house, in the dark.  It takes about 4-6 hours to be completed. One person is "it". They count to 100 while everyone else runs and hides. Then they wander around the perimeter of the house trying to find people. Once you're spotted, you have to run away and avoid being tagged. If you're tagged, you're frozen and required to stand there until someone else decides to be nice and unfreeze you. If you're tagged 3 times, you're it. Most of getting unfrozen involves you begging the person near you to unfreeze you while they spend at least 5 minutes mocking you for being slow and bad at hiding. If they decided to be nice, you were pretty much still screwed because you would forever be in their debt, doomed to carry their boiling hot cappuccino's home for the rest of your life! A lot of times, people would just prefer to stay frozen, rather than have to run away and hide again. Come to think of it, there was a lot of backstabbing going on in this game. If someone who I knew was slower than me was frozen, and the "it" person was nearby, I would unfreeze them to give myself time to escape while they were run down. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, we were some weird kids with way too much free time outside. It's just too bad that we were all very athletic kids. If only we'd had one slow sibling, or maybe one with severe asthma, this game would have been so much easier!
We weren't confined to the ground either. The reason my older brother never got tagged is because he knew how to get up on the roof, and the rest of us either didn't know how, or were too scared to try. So he would pretty much just sit up there and laugh at the rest of our toil. That's probably why he always wanted to play, because he always won! Curses!
The winter was the best time to play because we could climb up high in the pine trees next to the house. We had a good visual of the landscape and when someone started climbing the tree after us, we were able to slide down the branches packed with snow and land safely on the pile we'd made earlier. Plus it was fun to throw pine cones at people walking by.
This may all sound pretty fun to you, but that's because you've never played it before. It is a terrifying game. Being chased at full speed, through the pitch dark, like your life depends on it is horrible when you are a 6 year old kid. Even if you know it's just your sibling trying to tag you. No wonder I have so many nightmares! Thanks a lot guys for inventing this terrifying, yet addicting game.