Kids: If they’re not flying, they’re lying

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By D.L. Stewart, Contributing Writer 6:01 PM Tuesday, October 20, 2009

The trouble with kids is that you just can’t trust them.

If a kid looks you in the eye and swears that she ate every bite of her meatloaf, a parent’s first instinct should be to check the dog’s whiskers. When a kid insists before it’s time to leave for a trip that he doesn’t have to go potty, any parent in his or her right mind would immediately march him to the bathroom.

So what in the world could the parents of “balloon boy” have been thinking when they relied on a 6-year-old to be their accomplice?

The story of a little boy supposedly trapped in a weather balloon drifting out of control over Colorado was, according to the desperate-for-headlines news channels, “a story that gripped the nation.” A regular child-down-the-well drama.

As it turned out, the balloon was empty and the little boy reportedly was safe at home, where he had been hiding in a box in the attic. So the relieved parents immediately rushed him to “Larry King Live.”

That’s where the story began to unravel into what now is believed to be a pathetic attempt to usurp the 15 minutes of fame that rightfully belong to Kate & Jon, even though they had stolen it from the Octomom.

Because, just to prove how untrustworthy kids can be, the little boy messed it all up. When his dad asked him in front of a national television audience why he was hiding and didn’t come when he was called, he replied, “You said we did this for a show.”

Kids. You demand that they tell the truth and they lie. You encourage them to lie and they tell the truth.

There are some people who insist that children don’t lie. These are the same people who believe that world peace is just around the corner. Kids lie all the time. Some are just better at it than others. The really good ones grow up to be CEOs of insurance companies.

When my wife and I found a stash of Keystone beers in the weeds behind our garage, every one of our teenagers swore that it must have been left there by a homeless person. On another occasion, a neighbor called to complain that one of our kids had thrown an empty pizza box in his front yard. The kid insisted he wasn’t responsible.

“Then why is your name and our address on the delivery slip? I demanded.

“Typographical error,” he explained.

So, even though their dreams have been deflated and they are facing criminal charges, I have no sympathy for the parents of the “balloon boy.” That’s what they deserve. If they had spent more time parenting and less time trying to became famous, they would have known the kid might blow their gig by blurting out, “You said we did this for a show.”

Then again, we can’t be sure that he wasn’t lying about that, too.

That’s the trouble with kids.

You just can’t trust them.

Contact D.L. Stewart at  dlstew_2000@yahoo.com.

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