The Best Policy

Audible gasp.

Duncan told a lie on Thursday morning.

He came into my bedroom early in the morning and announced that he had just run outside, put the garbage can out just in time for the garbage truck to get the garbage, then had brought the can back around to the side of the house where it is usually parked. Garbage day is Thursday, and the truck comes at the ungodly hour of 6:30 am, which makes it virtually impossible to get the can out in the morning if you forget to do it at night. And which also makes for being woken up every Thursday morning by the rumbling of the truck as it stops at every house on our very long street. Then you can lay there and try to get back to sleep while you try not to obsess about whether or not the cans really did get put out the night before.

Anyway, Duncan didn't really get the garbage cans out that morning. He made up a somewhat elaborate story, to cover up for the fact that he forgot, because he was afraid he would get grounded from his video games if he forgot to do his chores. What he didn't think about was me, later that morning, taking yet another bag of trash out to the can, and being very surprised to see that it was full. Now, I am by no means the sharpest tool in the shed, but it did not take me long to figure out what had happened.

There are two notable points here. The first is that Dan and I both fell for his story, immediately and thoroughly, which looking back on it, should have seemed kinda sketchy from the get go. We fell for it though, because up until Thursday, I would have said that Duncan doesn't lie, period. Whether it is because of an extremely moral character, or because of his communication issues, I don't know, but he has never been one to stretch, distort, color, or otherwise cover up the truth. We never expected him to lie. In a way, we can look at this as progress, if he is now doing something normal, like lying, that he wasn't doing before. Then again, I never thought he was incapable of lying. I just don't think it ever occurred to him before.

The second point is that Duncan is 16, and he is lying about taking out the garbage. There are so many horrible things that a 16 year old boy could be lying to his parents about. 16 year old boys lie to their parents every day about awful, awful things, and we are only dealing with unfinished chores. I am counting myself fortunate, once again, to be his mom.

But he still got grounded from his video games. From 7:49 pm on Friday to 7:49 pm on Saturday. He begged. He pleaded. He offered to do all the chores in the house in exchange for leniency. But we held firm, and nixed the games, and he survived.