When I was little

I was a quirky kind of kid when I was little. And also, I was, well, I was pathological. In lying, that is. Although I didn’t think of it so much as “lying” as much as I considered it, “making the truth more interesting.”

In my efforts to make the world a more fascinating place, one fib at a time, I told the new kids who had just moved to Buffalo that the Olsen twins lived down the block from me. I don't know why. But I figured it was a good lie to tell.

I also tried to convince my little sister that there was a family living in the waterhole in our backyard. There was. A family of eight. Field mice. But it was a lot more interesting if they were human. So I led her to believe that they were. We’d knock and knock on the waterhole and when no one answered, I’d shrug and say “Oh I guess they’re out of town.” When the underground family never answered their door Ita grew suspicious. I sensed it. And it didn’t sit well with me. “Do you believe me?” I’d demand, hands on my hips. Silence. “Do you?” She shook her head. Now don’t get me wrong, I was a nice girl if you did things my way. But suggesting that I was a liar did not bode well for little Ita. So after a while of subtle manipulation and bullying, I finally got her to say she believed me. Which was all I really needed out of her.

I had an imaginary husband too. His name was Moshe. His last name was Kooboo, on account of I had to think super fast when my big sisters asked me what his last name was. Kooboo was all on could come up with on such short notice. And the sad thing is, I truly thought they believed me. So I continued to tell them about the beautiful wedding ceremony we had on Hunters Lane at 6 am. Hunters Lane was the street right next to ours, on which I had attended a block party just a week prior to my marriage. Yes, we had a block party wedding. It was invisible, chic and fabulous.

Arielle, my classmate brought a brand new Cinderella watch to school one day. A fantastic, blue watch with a picture of Cinderalla on it. I didn’t know why I wanted it so badly or how I would get it but I knew I needed that watch. And I needed it immediately. So I tapped her on the shoulder and asked in my sweetest, most polite voice, if I could perhaps borrow the beautiful thing. Unfortunately for me, she said no. Fortunately for me, I was not about to let a little “no” get in my way of attaining what I wanted. So I tapped her again and said, “Hey, guess what? Did you hear of a little thing called, if you give me the watch now, I’ll give it back to you before dinner?”

“How?” she asked, curious as to how I would get to her house which was across town, before dinner time. So I did what I had to and told her I could drop the watch in a slot in the phone and send it to her via phone technology. Her eyes widened in amazement. Apparently she had never heard of this kind of technology before. She obliged. Happily, I watched her slip off her watch and hand it to me, not before she reminded me to send it back to her through the phone. I promised. Later that night I got a phone call from Arielle, who had looked and looked in that slot for a certain Cinderella watch that had not yet come. Oops! I had not been prepared for her to actually go through with it.

So I went with the mature approach: complete and utter denial.