Pants on Fire

The other day, Sam and I were sitting together on the deck watching Daddy BBQ, when a tiny translucent green worm (tree caterpillar?) descended between us on a wispy thread and landed on my hand. Sam was enthralled. He's long been a bug's best friend, but this was the most delicate specimen he'd seen. I let it wiggle onto the table top beside us, where it became a determined adventurer braving the nooks and crannies of the painted wood at quite a clip. Well, quite a clip for something that was maybe 4 millimeters long.

Sam promptly personified the wiggler, wondering when he left his family and if his parents were worried. He delighted at how quickly the worm switched directions after lifting his impossibly small head seemingly to peer into the distance and gauge the route. Curious, Sam started tapping his plastic cup on the table to influence its decisions. He called Daddy over to take a look at how far the little body could stretch to cross a notch in the wood. All of us, leaning over this little bug and talking about what his plans might be, where he might be trying to go.

Then Jeremy and I turned our backs on the wild kingdom to check the BBQ. A few seconds later, Sam called Daddy back to explain an apparent tragedy: "Look! He stretched so hard last time that he squished himself." He pointed to a greenish black smear on the table for proof. The adventurous worm had been pulverized. Jeremy and I let Sam's words hang in the air while he worked to compose his face into a sort of surprised nonchalance. We were hoping he'd retract the bold-faced lie, but he held our stare and awaited our response. I started with a leading observation: "Sam, I don't think that's true. I think something else happened..." But he didn't take the out. "It squished itself," he reiterated. "I didn't do it."

The swell of pained indignation I felt looking into the eyes of my lying son subsided when I saw that his breathing had become quick and shallow, his eyes a little wider in the effort to hold the gathering tears. Jeremy offered Sam a second chance: "Did you accidentally squish the worm with your cup?" And the floodgates opened. Sam's face crumpled and his body went slack as the knot in his chest released with the admission "I didn't mean for that to happen!" It was hard to tell then if he lied to protect himself from imagined punishments or from the knowledge that he'd killed a plucky worm who missed his family. This is, after all, the boy who makes us repatriate ants and spiders caught in the house.

We sternly rehearsed the "nothing is worse than a lie" speech, during which the telltale smudge called to the chastened boy, pulling his guilty glances repeatedly in its direction. Sure that the real lesson had been covered, we tried to soothe away his upset by explaining how short and tough a bug's life is, and how it was likely that one of us would have stepped on it that night without even realizing it. (Later, Sam would summarize for Tracey with the unsettling declaration, "It takes people longer to die than it takes bugs to die.") As he visibly relaxed and got set for supper, I studied the alteration in Sam's features, trying to commit to memory the differences between the truthful and untruthful countenance--recalling the slight flicker in his eyes, the nervous set of his mouth that makes him look pouty.

Because years from now, when Sam's standing on the driveway explaining that So-and-So's cottage party will be chaperoned by a dozen sober and upstanding St John's Ambulance attendants, I want to be able to stare him down and have him wonder how I do it. I will call this the "It Squished Itself" moment. (Sam, I really hope there aren't many of those....)