Lies My Dad Told Me

I consider myself a relatively intelligent person.  I get it from my parents; they are both extremely intelligent too. (Wonder what happened with my brother?)  One of the curses of intelligent people is that we are curious about things.  All things, everywhere.  We eagerly seek out knowledge and soak it up like sponges. How do we seek it? With questions, that's how.  Lots and lots of questions, which sometimes don't exactly have direct answers.

I would imagine this can become quite bothersome for parents of young, intelligent children. I mean, you want them to be curious, you want them to ask questions, just not so many God-Damned weird ass questions that you have no answers to.  I suppose this is why my dad just started making up random shit to tell me.  I’m sure he got bored with giving me real answers and decided to have a little fun with me.  Here are two examples:

Me: Dad, what happens if you get a piece of metal stuck in your eye?

Dad: I would have to take you to the doctor and he would use a big magnet to get it out.

Me: What would happen if I got a piece of rock stuck in my eye?  You can’t get that with a magnet…

Dad: The doctor would have to pop your eyeball out of its socket, wash it off with water, and put it back in.

This is a specially designed "Eyeball Holder" for washing.

Me: Dad, why does it feel weird when I put my finger in my belly button?

Dad: Because that’s where you got your food when you were in Mommy’s belly.

Me:  ???.....But why does it FEEL weird?

Dad: Because it’s still attached to your insides and if you pick at it too much it will come undone and all your guts will fall out and you will die.

To this day, it makes me nauseous if someone touches my bellybutton.

Cute, right? Sure...the problem is he never told me those things weren’t true and let me keep on believing them until I brought up these “facts” in 7^th grade only to be completely humiliated in front of my entire science class.  As you may know, 7th grade was a particularly hard year for me.  

At least now I am at an age where I have outgrown believing all my dad’s little “falsehoods.”  Or so I thought.  

The other day Big Dinosaur and I were coming home from a friends house and he purposely missed the little paint stripes in the road.  This conversation followed:

Me:  Joe!  You’re supposed to run over those!  It’s how the highway department tests different kinds of paint to see which ones stay longest.

Joe:  What?!

Me:  You know, those paint stripes you just drove around.

Joe:  Those are called Rumble Strips and they are to let you know a corner is coming…  I knew the corner was coming so I didn’t run over the strips.  What the hell are you talking about?

Me: It’s not a paint test?

Joe: No.

Me: ......Damnit!

 Things like this make me wonder....what kind of bullshit stories will I tell my kids?  Well, I will get to find out before too long, because Big Dinosaur and I are expecting a Baby Dinosaur around March 9th and we can't be more excited!  Actually, instead of a Baby Dinosaur, we are secretly hoping for a pony.  *Fingers Crossed*