I am standing at the base of the Statue of Liberty. I am five years-old and want to climb to the top, all the way up the spinning staircases, right to the torch. But, I cannot because, as my mother informs me, the family did not send away for tickets.

 

Evidently, we were supposed to mail away for them, and that takes two weeks and we didn’t do it.

 

"Awwww, mom," I say to her, angry, "next time we better mail away for those damn tickets."

My mother pats me on the head – of course, Michael – because she knows there will never be a next time.

 

 

It is four years later and I am in the third grade and we are discussing our class trip to the Statue of Liberty. I am the class nerd, so it is my job to raise my hand, be called on, and state any relevant facts of the matter.

"Mrs. Teacher," I say, "if we are going to the Statue of Liberty, we better mail away for tickets now, so we can go all the way to the top."

"What are you talking about?" she asks.

"The last time I was at the Statue of Liberty I wanted to go all the way to the top, but my mother –"

I stop talking.

I know the ending.

I go home that afternoon to confront my mother.

"Ma, remember when we went to the Statue of Liberty?"

She is reading the Page 6 celebrity gossip. She does this every day. Somewhere else, a family is eating dinner.

"What about it?" she asks without looking up.

"You know how I wanted to go to the top of the Statue of Liberty, and you said that we couldn't because we needed to mail away for tickets?"

"What about it?" she asks. She's still reading.

"Ma – there are no tickets for the Statue of Liberty! You just walk right up!"

My mother looks at me with a disappointing stare, like, duh, of course, you dumb little monkey, there are no tickets, didn't you know I was lying? She was tired, hungry, poor, and she just wanted to get off that island.

How about when she told me that elephants never forget? That’s a lie.

 

And, no way lady, tomatoes are not a fruit, they are a vegetable.

 

Jews control the world? No they don’t.

 

And how about all the times she said not to do something because “your father will get mad”. But I’ve never seen my father mad! It’s her who would get mad.

 

The lies, the damn lies!

 

When will they end?

 

 

Of course, one generation deserves another, so when my cousins came into the world and became old enough to understand language, the lying began anew.

My sister teaches our five year-old cousin that when you put a quarter into a parking meter, the quarter falls down an underground tube where it's picked up by elves that live in the sewers.

One day, my sister will happily hand my cousin a quarter and say to her, here, give it to the elves, and my cousin will look back and sneer: "I know there are no elves. The quarter goes someplace else."

 

And then she will grow up and have children of her own and teach them that the sky is blue because when God went to the paint store, that was the cheapest color they had.

God just wanted to save money so he could buy more elephants.