Yes, I realize this is not an earth-shattering revelation. We all lie, all the time. Big ones, as well as the countless little “innocent” lies, little fibs to make other people feel better or ourselves look better, to spare feelings or create false positive ones. “Oh, you don’t look your age at all, wow have you lost weight, no, I really enjoyed that poem you felt comfortable to share with everyone. It sounded so…heartfelt!”
All part of the human society two-step. It doesn’t go over well when you tell someone they look old and fat, that their singing voice is terrible and should remain in the shower. And you certainly can’t tell your kid that their drawing is atrocious, that they’re horrible at their current sport, or that they sometimes annoy the crap out of you just by being them.
Many of our lies are these attempts at kindness, simply necessities to keep the peace and be a “nice” person. But there are other kinds of lies, necessary and sometimes insidious ones. Like the lies about what you like and dislike.
One thing I never anticipated was how much kids would watch you. Gaze and imitate, absorb what you do and say and like and are. For a good long time, whatever you hate, they hate. Whatever you like, they like. And there’s a lot of power in that. The sirens’ call of making a mini-me. We hate this, we love that! Yes we do, harump harump. And while the mini-me stage is not forever, that machine is always there working in the background, even when they’re teenagers and are sworn to despise who you are and how you got there. Still, in the background, they’re forming those patterns. They’re still looking right at you.
While I recognize the allure of filling your kid up with your own opinions and tastes and ideas, I want them to have some of their own! Sure, I want them to be at least a bit like me, I’m only human and have an ego. But I want them to get there on their own whenever possible, not accepting my entire file on a subject without some exploration and discovery of their own.
This was represented fully on one of the first flights Sophie ever took. Way before I had sent out the memo that all assholes would have to come to us from now on, we were flying to another Iowan Thanksgiving out of our little San Luis Obispo, the tiny airport surrounded by the mini-mountains, where you had to get up quick to miss the hills, and the gusts were always blowing through and the fog was always rolling in, and you were invariably crammed into some 40 year old prop-job that looked to be on its last mail run.
I hate flying. Absolutely hate it with all I am. Used to love it when I was a young man, listening to Hendrix’ “Let the Good Times Roll” blasting on my headphone while sipping a free drink, lounging back and thinking how fucking cool it was that I was flying! Actually flying, this was a miracle! Drinking and flying and rocking out and this all just kicks ass! What a life! Whoooooohoooo!!!
But that inevitably wore off. I grew older and further away from the carefree vine of my youth, and modern flying just kept sucking more and more in general. While the shrinking seats, bitter flight attendants, and multitude of other vagaries kept cropping up to make flying less of a miracle and more of a humiliating horror, it was admittedly the grave uncertainties and sheer death defiance the whole venture represented that wore on me as I grew older. This was not a natural state of affairs. We were crammed together for most of a day in a huge bus made of thin aluminum, barely stapled together, flying 500 miles an hour. These things are taken down by fucking geese in the flight path, so no, I’m not brimming with confidence that everything’s gonna be OK. If it’s even slightly not OK, we all die. There is no middle ground, we are STILL not given parachutes though I have asked for them repeatedly, and I no longer think turbulence is “cool” or that flying is “fun.”
But 3 year-old Sophie doesn’t know any of that. She just knows that this is the first time she can remember being on an airplane. The last time she was freshly walking and spent most of the flight running up and down the aisles trying to be flattened by sharp-eyed stewardesses, or desperately attempting sleep on my sweaty shoulders, flopping from shoulder to shoulder on that sticky flight to Chicago. She was still a baby then, living in a magic little bubble.
But not now. Now she sees the rest of the world, her horizon goes so far, all of a sudden. Maybe even as far as mine. She sees outside the car and the airplane, clear to the mountains and to all those outside possibilities that contain wonder and doom. And now we’re in this piece of shit puddle jumper on a windy Fall day, the propellers so loud we might as well be sitting outside on the goddamn wing. Bouncing side to side with every gust, tossed up and down by the drafts coming off the ground and the mountains. Loud, hot, cramped, bumpy flight, with the occasional free-fall of terror, where each time I’m sure this is it, we’re going back home the quick way. Absolute hell for me.
But not for Sophie, not yet. She’s still unsure about what to think. Sitting next to me, the tiny thing swimming in her own seat for the very first time, the seatbelt tightly and uselessly clasped around her, (as if a seatbelt is going to save us, what a crock that whole seatbelt on a plane thing is, just pass out the parachutes already!) And she’s looking at me, that intent, open look without any real expression that little kids give you when they’re recording. Recording deep somewhere, down in the hardwire section of their young psyche. Watching me every time we hurtle downward for 5 or 10 full seconds in this balsa wood and aluminum foil contraption. Watching and recording my face for any observable cue. Is this fun, Daddy? Do we hate this? Is this just like a ride, or are we going to die now?
And I saw myself through her right then and it was pathetic. Clutching and kneading the seat in front of me like a rosary, looking at the floor, white-faced and convinced that I was going to have a heart attack if we didn’t slam into a mountain first. I was going to make her scared of flying too! Bad enough that I was an overgrown coward; she didn’t have to be one. I owed her at least that. I had to fake it, and fake it really well. She was 4 inches from my face and truly paying attention.
“Whooo..” I said on the next nose-dive, all of my innards falling away and presumably shooting out the back of me. She didn’t look convinced. It was a pretty lame attempt, I’ll give her that.
“Wheeee!” I said, prying my hands off the polyester in front of me to raise them in the air like I couldn’t get enough of this great ride! And I smiled, the best I could, using all my method acting from years gone by. I imagined the look on Jesus’ face when he saw me in a few minutes, a goofy ass smile frozen on my corpse. That was something that I could use to make me genuinely smile. “Woohooo, that’s a good one! Wheee!”
Her face slowly melted and a little smile broke out. She held her hands up slowly.
“Iss likea wide, huh Daddy?”
“Yeah it’s like a ride, sweetie. Here comes another one…”
“Wheee…” she said too loud, breaking out in giggles. A third of the plane shot us evil glares as they all held on tight and grimaced in fear. But not me. I was LOVING it.
“Oooooo… best one yet!” I said, almost genuinely.
We soaked in the hour long ride of terror with joy on our faces, steeped in the enmity of the sane adults around us. But I faked it, and faked it well.
Now Sophie loves flying. The more turbulence, the better. And I’ve been faking it for so long now, I almost never get scared anymore. Almost. I faked myself out of it. I actually believed my own bullshit!
Sometimes they make you become a better person in spite of yourself. You have to, or they end up with those same nasty faults you cling to. Nothing is worse than seeing your faults hung on your kids. Nothing is better than seeing them without one of your weaknesses because you ponied up and changed. Or, at least, faked it permanently. There can be great honor in lying.
“Woohooo!!! Daddy dis is gweat!!”
Ha! LOVE THIS! So so so so true. Thanks for these stories and truths. Should be a book.