When is it Time to Teach Your Kids to Lie a Little Tiny Bit?

My Child: When I am twenty-one, can I do anything I want?

Me: Yes. What do you want to do when you are twenty-one?

My Child: Go skating.

Me: Respectable, respectable. And?

My Child: And drink Diet Coke! Is Diet Coke good for us?

Me: Nope. It’s very bad.

My Child: Then why do you and Daddy drink it all the time?

Me: Well, Mommy and Daddy are addicted (a long diatribe about addiction and a motherly lecture on avoiding cigarettes and drugs followed but had been omitted in the interest in space and not putting anyone to sleep) and that is why you probably never want to start drinking Coke.

My Child: Well also, can it make you fat?

Me: Uh…ok yeah, also it can make you fat.

My Child: Mom, you need to stop drinking Diet Coke now and never, ever, ever have it again.

Me: Oh yeah? Is Momma fat?

My Child: No, but I don’t want you to be fat.

Me: Ok, well I will try not to drink it so much anymore.

My child then retreated to her room. A few minutes later, she came back to the bathroom where I was doing my hair and said:

“Well actually Mom, you are a teeny- tiny- bit fat” and pointed to my belly, "but just right there."

I spent the rest of the day trying to remember what possessed me to teach her to talk.