Just two beers, officer

I have a kid who lies. The joke here (if you care to call it a joke) is that the way to tell if he is lying is to check to see if his lips are moving.

No offense to the men out there, but 13 year old boys are a world unto themselves, full of illogic, preoccupation, and basic stupidity, as well as twice the grocery bill of any other member of the family. Add to that the knee-jerk lying, the lack of thought processing, and general dopiness, and I find it hard to cope. However, the lying is the worst thing--I don't know if it is related to the attachment disorder, a residual effect left over from the trauma, or general teenage defiance.

I mean, last week Kiki asked if she and her friend could go to the library after school. The high school, rec center, library, and middle school, along with the two athletic fields and performing arts center, are all in a complex, so I gave her permission to walk to the library after school to do her homework, talk to her friends, or check out the boys. Twenty minutes after she arrived at the library, Kiki called and told me she was going over to visit at the junior high school. Since she had told me she was going, I gave her permission; I had suspected that was part of the plan since the beginning. Plus, I figured lugging her textbooks, violin case, and gym bag a quarter mile to the junior high and back to the library (I wasn't about to change the pickup point, after all) in ninety-two degree heat would be an outcome which might provide a better lesson than calling her out on her plot.

It was. However, I did point out that I didn't appreciate subterfuge.

The subterfuge is normal teenage stuff. What I don't get is the situation where I will look over because I hear slurping, see the dog licking Rocky's hand, and say, "Stop letting the dog lick you. How many times do I have to tell you to not let the dog lick you!"

Rocky yanks his hand away and says, "I'm not letting the dog lick me."

So, is it splitting hairs, as he at that very second is no longer letting the dog lick him? I say, "You were." Then we have the "No, I wasn't." At which point, I will look at him and say, "I had just two beers, officer." He gets it. Yet he still denies everything.

Then I have a choice--I need to decide if he is lying to get out of trouble (and incidentally thinking that THIS TIME I will be stupid enough to believe him) or is he lying because he honestly was skating around the rings of Saturn and didn't know the dog was licking him. Usually, I will have him tell me, working through which would be the lesser of the two evils, as each will have its own consequences.

Someday, someday he will tell me the truth. And the sad part is, I probably won't believe him.