I know that this is something I’ve complained about before in this space, but it bears repeating: my kids are really, really bad at lying. But here’s the thing: yours are bad at it, too. This is the conclusion I have come to after some very unscientific research conducted with me, a few of my fellow parents, and several bottles of wine. In other words, we were all sitting around kvetching about our children, and the grand conclusion we all arrived at was this: kids these days just don’t know how to lie.
I mean, don’t get me wrong: they try. They’re just so bad at it that it would probably be better for all concerned if they just gave up and actually did the thing they were trying to get out of in the first place. Take brushing your teeth, for example. Back in my day we went to the effort of wetting the toothbrush, squeezing a little toothpaste out into the trashcan and then spending a few minutes standing around in the bathroom with the water running, all to create a good illusion. (The fact that all that effort could have just as easily been spent actually brushing our teeth is not lost on me.) But kids these days don’t even bother going into the bathroom—for all they know you could have wrapped their toothbrush in twenty dollar bills as a test. (I actually had a friend who used a version of that trick—he hid a ten dollar bill under the keyboard cover on their piano to test out his theory that no one was really practicing at all. He was kind of sad when at the end of the week he got his ten dollars back.)
The final straw in the “kids these days just can’t lie” pile came when I was talking to a friend about her son’s band grade: it seems that he was getting a “B” because he wasn’t turning in his weekly practice logs. The reason that he wasn’t turning them in wasn’t because he wasn’t practicing. And it wasn’t because he was losing them in the fifteen minutes between home and school every Monday (this is what happened with my kids.) No, he wasn’t turning them in because he wasn’t filling them out. At all. The gravity of the situation gave me immediate pause—this was about so much more than a simple practice log.
“Wait a minute,” I asked. “Do you mean to tell me that he actually believes he needs to fill out his practice logs with the truth?”
“Yep,” she replied. I stared at her in amazement, because it isn’t like her son is planning on entering the priesthood any time soon, or finishing off his final requirements for his Eagle Scout badge. He’s a normal sneaky kid. Just like mine. And yet, he has somehow overlooked this opportunity to tell an easy lie.
It’s not integrity. (See: Boy Scout, not one, above). It’s a lack of real world lying experience. Back in my day (here I go again) I would have grabbed 26 copies of the practice log sheets and filled them all out the first week of school, making sure to vary the practices times just enough so that there was no discernible pattern. Then I would have put them all in my backpack and pulled a fresh one out every Monday morning. This would have freed up enough time for me learn how to write really small notes on my wrists and knees for use during math finals, and other important school-avoiding related activities.
Dishonest? Absolutely. Realistic? Even more so. And, unfortunately, almost completely beyond your average high-schooler these days. It’s enough to make me wonder who this generation plans on using for lawyers and politicians at all.