Lies. All Lies.

"Belle, do you know what it means when you point your middle finger at someone?"
"No, I'm sorry sweetheart. Princesses don't talk of such things."

As a single mother, my mornings usually resemble a marathon run at a break-neck pace from the bed to the office desk. They usually start with calisthenics at 4 a.m., which consists of hurdles jumped over dogs desperate for the back yard, stretches from trying on eight different outfits to find the least-fattening attire, and vocal stair-mastering in which I run up the steps no less than three times to yell at the kid to get out of bed.

            It’s no wonder that last Friday, as usual, I had no choice but to blast the air conditioning full blast on our short drive to school. Even in the 6 a.m. dark, I could feel two big blue eyes observing me.

            “Mommy,” she finally says. “Why are you always so sweaty every morning?”

            My voice vibrates from pressing my face as close to the AC vent as possible while still keeping one eye on the morning traffic. I answer, “Probably because I have to run around like a chicken with my head cut off.”

            “What does that mean? Chicken with its head cut off?” Chris asks.

            “Oh, you know the chickens on the farm? When they chop……..”

            Uh oh. Wouldn’t you know. For once she is actually listening closely to my words. Being a city kid such things are not a matter of course and she honestly has no idea what it means.

I frantically wonder if I should really be telling a 6-year-old how nuggets are created? I have a feeling she would be the type of kid who would then refuse meat on principle alone, and I know her tastes mean a vegetarian lifestyle would consist of black beans and Sunny D.

I don’t want to have this conversation ever - let alone at 6 a.m. So, two hours into the morning, I tell my first lie of the day (unless you count the one I tell myself about exercise).

            “I don’t know why they say that,” I backtrack. “I guess it’s just one of those weird things that people say and nobody knows why.”

I add a quick plea in my mind, “please, please, please let it go.”

Tattoos are taboo.

            It’s not that I want to lie to my kid. Call it the desire to preserve childhood innocence. Or blame my inability to stare confrontation in the face without stuttering or breaking down in tears. Whatever the reason I find myself lying to her a lot.

            Often my lies revolve around money and me telling Chris that we don’t have enough of it to go out to a restaurant for supper or to buy her the newest toy. Sometimes it’s true. Sometimes it’s not. It never stops her from asking exactly how much money I do have in my wallet so she can calculate on her own and me screaming at her to leave my purse alone. I can see no earthly reason why a grade-schooler should know how much money I make and when that paycheck lands in my checking account unless she’s going to take over my car payment.

            Most recently Chris has exasperated me with her nearly daily request to know what the middle finger means when you point it at someone. If she had been paying close attention she might have deduced the meaning from the time that one guy cut me off on the freeway. That day she must have been oblivious to me like most of the others. She has since begun trying to break me down with consistent begging to know the gesture’s origin.

My answer of, “It’s something very, very bad that even I’m not supposed to say and you should never, ever do that to someone,” only seems to fuel her curiosity.

            “But what does it really mean?” she pleads. Then she gasps. “Does it mean poop? Or stupid? Idiot? Oh no. Is it …is it…butt?” she asks and covers her mouth.

            “No, it’s worse than all of those,” I tell her. “It’s so bad that we never, ever say it.”

            I feel a little like a Hogwarts teacher.

We'll have to have the big talk before this happens.

            I always hoped for a smart child and by most accounts so far I have gotten my wish. But I guess since I’m not as smart, I never thought about the practical side to a child’s intelligence. She doesn’t ask why the sky is blue, but rather focuses on all the difficult matters that shouldn’t be on a first-grader’s agenda.

It didn’t take long before I could no longer lie to her and tell her that, sorry, Hannah Montana isn’t on TV right now because it’s not on the TV listing. Now that she can read and run the remote control herself, and is allowed out in public with her peers, the questions are coming faster and faster.

            Thinking about all the things I DON’T want to tell my kid about wears me out.

I believe the whole “where do babies come from?” conversation won’t be played off easily with the stork theory. We have discussed at length why she must stay where I can always see her, but I dread the day she wonders just what could happen to her if a stranger snatched her. Having conversations about important issues like abstinence and racism gives me a headache.

I can just imagine the endless streams of “why” that will follow when I try to bumble out an answer to any of life’s serious issues.

I’m sure I’m not the only one stuck with this problem. So here is my business proposal for someone who is not as faint of heart as me. If someone has acceptable answers to a child’s uncomfortable questions I believe he could have a lucrative career by being on-call – at usually the most inconvenient times - when those questions arise. I guess it would be like those people hired out by large corporations to fly around the country laying people off. It’s the delivery and the readiness in which the explanation is accepted by said child that really makes all the difference.

I will need said services very soon as I am fairly certain that Chris’ middle finger will be exercised in the hopes that someone else will tell her what it means, since I’m obviously trying to put one over on her. She’s on to my lies.

But what does it mean?