WHILE I insist that my children tell the truth about everything, my parental web of deceit expands exponentially each day.
We were walking to school yesterday morning, and in front of virtually every building we passed sat piles of dried-out firs.
"Look at the Christmas trees," said my observant son. He's very bright for 2.
"Why are they in the garbage?" asked my daughter, 4. "I thought Santa would take them back."
"Santa?" I was confused. Evidently my husband, co-conspirator in the web of deceit, told them an untruth without getting the story straight with me first.
"Isn't Santa supposed to take all the trees and make them into new ones for next year?" she asked.
I rebounded. "Oh, that. Sure, he is."
"Well, when is he coming?"
"Oh, he's busy making toys for next year."
"Will his elves come?"
"Actually, it's the New York City garbage men who will come and collect the trees," I said. "Then they'll ... put them on trucks ... and bring them to Santa in the North Pole."
"How long will it take to drive there?"
"Oh, gosh, about a month."
"Wow," she said.
I was into it now and was ready to tell more about elves meeting the trucks at the border of the North Pole in order to keep the location of Santa's house a secret, but the kids seemed satisfied.
You may wonder: Why am I lying to my kids? I could explain that these trees get recycled as landfill or used to build up the sand dunes and fight erosion out on Long Island. This is a good thing and my kids would understand it - but, frankly, too much talking about environmental issues makes them tense.
A friend who was in town the other day needed to use my computer, so she came over for a few hours. She kept printing out her work and making changes and apologizing for using so much printer paper.
"Don't worry about it," I told her.
"But we're running out of trees!" my friend blurted out - the panicky mantra of the environmentally aware.
I looked at my kids, hoping they hadn't heard. It was like watching scared rabbits prick up their ears. "What?" said my daughter. "There's no more trees?"
"Not if we use too much paper," my friend told her.
"Trees," said my son, sadly.
I tried to reassure them that everyone and his brother are planting trees because it's politically correct, and we're probably going to become a paperless society with computers and all, and we're not going to run out of trees, and how there are more trees now than before the Pilgrims came over, because the Pilgrims and the Indians before them couldn't put out forest fires, while we can. (I read that somewhere.)
This constant haranguing our kids about recycling, the environment and trees, trees, trees is turning our kids into nervous wrecks!
Take children's television - please. I want my son to come away from "Sesame Street" singing the alphabet and counting to 12, and he does. My daughter's up to 40 and can sing "Happy Birthday" in sign language. But then there's this fish on "Sesame Street" who's apparently very upset with a little boy who's brushing his teeth because the boy is using up all the fish's water. The whole point of the sketch is to teach children about water conservation, which is very noble, but my daughter now thinks that I'm some sort of eco-terrorist-fish-slaughterer if I allow the water to run an extra second while we're brushing her teeth.
"Mommy, Mommy, turn off the water," she says. "The fish is running out of ocean!"
I love "Sesame Street" and "Arthur" and "Gullah, Gullah Island" and "The Big Comfy Couch." But there isn't a single show that hasn't pushed recycling and extinction at my kids. It's dull enough watching one's parents forever bundling newspapers - now kids have to watch puppets do the same.
Hey, I'm all for a little "Give a hoot, don't pollute" for the kids. But do we have to hit them over the head with it all the time? I just want to be able to tell my kids the story of George Washington and the cherry tree and have them thinking the moral of the story is never tell a lie - not that the Father of Our Country was a heartless tree murderer!
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