You Can't Handle the Truth!
The announcement came from the back seat. We were en route to Noodles and Company for dinner, and the boy cleared his throat and addressed us, with all of the gravitas that a three-year-old can muster. "Um, I'm going to get a motorcycle." "Ah", I replied. "When?" "When the baby comes", he said.
He is learning how the world works - the car doesn't drive itself, Daddy does it; the red button turns off the TV, not some Invisible God Of Bed/Dinner Time; the left knob makes the water hot, the right makes it cold. (Such insight does not, it seem, extend itself to the toilet; the other night Lucas made it absolutely clear that he does not want to "live in the potty with the poopy, because it's lonely and stinky.")
But he's picked up something else.
Last night, we put him to bed at the normal time, and hunkered down on the couch to watch "Chuck" (quick plug; my brother-in-law's band Foreign Born appeared as the bar band in that ep, download their excellent album "On The Wing Now" over at iTunes). About a half an hour later, I got up to go and check on him. I opened the hallway door...and it was blocked. By something small and giggly. "Lucas? Can you scoot back from the door?" I entered the hall, and found the kid sitting there. Surrounded by small sheets of freshly peeled-off white latex paint. With a bottle of Febreze lying on the floor at his side. Then the smell hit me, a wall of Summer Fresh! reek. My mind shifted into Law and Order mode. Boy goes into bathroom, grabs bottle of Febreze, sprays pretty much all of it onto his carpet (elementary, my dear Watson - the bottle was pretty much full, now it's pretty much empty, and the carpet makes a wet squishy sound when one steps upon it). Then, in the grips of a Febreze High, he sits down and proceeds to peel the already-peeling paint off of the door (Exhibit A: large piece of latex in the accused's left hand).
"Lucas?"
"Hi Daddy."
"Did you do this?"
"Um...no."
Pause. This should be good.
"You didn't take the paint off the door?"
"No, I din-int."
"Ok, well, who did?"
"Mick."
"Mick. Mick, our doggie Mick?"
"Yes, daddy."
A lie! The kid looked me right in the eye and told a lie! Casting aspersion on the beloved family pet, no less! It was time for a Talk. I took him out of the Febreze-sodden hallway, at him down, and patiently went over the whole Lying Thing - why it's bad, why one always gets in more trouble when one lies, famous Non-Liars in History ( namely, Batman and Superman). And then I asked him again. "Did you do this?" He looked at me. "Um...yes. But I wanted to make the door look new." A box of Arm and Hammer and twenty minutes of vacuuming later, the attar of Febreze was mostly gone, and the kid was sound asleep.
Earlier today, I paused to reflect on the words of a wise man. "The truth", he said, "often depends on one's point of view." That peeling paint? Didn't actually start peeling on its own - a few months ago, the dog decided to scratch at that door, and in doing so started the process. So Lucas...well, technically, he wasn't really lying. I felt a twinge of guilt. Being three, we often tell him, is hard. Telling the truth can be hard. Finding a good lawyer when you're three? There's the real trick.
