The Stories My Kid Tells

Today has been an incredibly unproductive day at work. I managed to get only one tiny, low-effort thing done.

Honestly, I'm just not in much of an emotional space to work. I've spent most of the day feeling as if I've taken 1,000 shots of adrenaline. My jaw is clenched, my heart is beating too fast, and I'm sure my blood pressure is sky-high.

I finally gave up and took a nap this afternoon. I got real about the fact that I wasn't going to get any work done.

Danielle gave me hassle about napping. "It's not fair you are taking a nap and I'm not allowed!" she complained.

"That might be so, but I am also not the one who is arguing about going to bed," I countered, just prior to rolling over and falling asleep.

Before my nap, I'd wandered over to the across-the-street neighbor's house. One of the neighbors had helped me with my great big project, and I needed to pay her. I stayed and chatted for a while and filled her in on the latest developments. She and her husband knew I had left for the night, as they happened to be coming across the street to say hello just as I was tossing luggage into the cab of my great-big truck.

While we were chatting, I mentioned Danielle's tendency to tell tall tales. I expressed considerable frustration over Danielle's increasing and escalating lies, and worried that her stories would eventually be believed by the wrong person.

"Oh don't worry," assured my neighbor, "we had already figured out that Danielle likes to tell tall tales."

Apparently, Danielle recently offered that she started her period when she was nine years old, had had sex with a man, became pregnant, and her birth mother had taken her to the hospital and doctors cut the baby out of her stomach. She said that she had an enormous scar on her belly from the operation.

The neighbor didn't believe a word.

I don't believe it, either. I've seen Danielle parading around in nothing but a bra and panties, and once when she was clowning around, she accidentally showed me even more. I know for a fact her body bears no such scar.

It seems, just like the rest of her behavior, that her habit of lying is escalating, too.