Phony baloney alibis: Have you ever been caught in one?

Heh. I did stuff -- I remember once a friend's parents were going out of town, but didn't want friend to stay home alone. So friend told parents was staying at my house. I told parents was staying at friend's house. Another kid told parents was staying I forget where, and all stayed at the empty house for the weekend. We didn't get busted though. Our parents were gullible. Mine didn't really care about that stuff, tbh -- no curfew, was allowed to stay home alone all weekend, etc.

We were supposed to be going to church but instead my brother took the car out to spin donuts in the mud in some field. We washed the car, suspicious enough but were totally busted when mud fell off the bottom of the car onto the driveway.

I'm sure I'll think of something more fun that that, give me time.

In the meantime, I can't believe the kid was smart enough at age 3 to pretend to be asleep.

I actually didn't pull this kind of stuff, though I was accused of it quite a lot. Probably because my brother is something of a compulsive liar and my mom likes to project her own experiences on everyone else.

The one instance that stands out best was the time I went to the movies with a friend. Her parents dropped us off, my mother picked us up. While we waited for the post-movie lobby to clear up a bit, I decided I wanted a snack. Right outside the theater in the wall was an ice pop stand. I took all of two minutes to buy myself and my friend some pops.

Man, you'd think I'd killed a man. When I climbed in the car it was all accusations of messing around with boys. Lying and going to bars (I was 12, btw). And, naturally, shoplifting the lipstick we were clearly wearing. (And another point of clarification - she was already trying to foist makeup on me; so why would it be forbidden then? That's one I'll never understand.) To which I held up the last stump of my pop and said "funny how my lipstick's the same color as my pop, Mom."

I got grounded for back talk. Eventually my mom realized I was a boring child uninterested in repeating her *ahem* adventurous youth.

I made up some stories, but I don't think I ever got caught.

One of the worst was when I got stung by a wasp at my grandmother's house.

I'm terribly apiphobic - have been my entire life. We were eating outside at Mammaw's and I was freaking out about the bees buzzing around the picnic table. My dad got so angry that I wouldn't sit down and calm down... He insisted they were harmless and I was totally over-reacting. "That type of bee doesn't even HAVE a stinger," he said. We fought and I went running into the house. Not ten minutes later, I laid my arm down on a chair, right on top of a wasp, which stung me. HARD. Mammaw saw the whole thing, chased the thing down with a flyswatter and beat it to a pulp for stinging her baby. Then she threw the body away, treated my sting and said "We're gonna tell your dad this was one of his harmless little bees that stung you." And we did.

My dad honestly thought, until I spilled the beans to him at Mammaw's funeral over 20 years later that it was his fault I got stung and had felt bad about it ever since.

There wasn't a particular excuse involved in this incident, but Imma share anyway, since it's about kids being sneaky little boogers:

One year we all gathered at my brother's house for the holidays, and I slept on the living-room couch, right across from the tree and stockings.

About 4:00 AM, I awoke to whispers and giggling. Being a sneaky adult myself, I pretended I was still asleep, and watched with great amusement as the three kids proceeded to empty their stockings and examine the contents, comparing presents and generally being freakin' adorable.

Their nocturnal curiosity satisfied, my brother's children proceeded to carefully replace everything in their stockings. My eldest niece, on the other hand, perhaps because she was an only child and therefore unaccustomed to having someone else to blame when she got into mischief, was utterly unversed in the fine art of convering her tracks. She left the contents of her stocking scattered across the floor, and all three tiptoed back to bed.

The next morning, when their parents discovered the mess, my sister was horribly embarrassed and proceeded to lay into her daughter. "Why would you do this? Your cousins didn't ransack THEIR stockings!" The cousins said nary a word. I swear they were both trying to will halos into existence above their little heads. To my niece's credit, she wasn't a tattletale. She accepted her scolding stoicly, although she DID shoot them some well-deserved dirty looks for letting her take the fall alone.

Unfortunately for the little "angels," Aunt Tazlima IS a tattletale, and I'd had a front-row seat to the entire event. I stepped in and let my sister know that her niece and nephew were just as rotten as her daughter, and a good bit sneakier to boot. We all proceeded to share stories of our own childhood sneakiness, and Christmas was saved!

I don't really have a specific tale, but whenever I got in trouble I would immediately blame my older brother.

I was a very honest child. My older sister had a job cleaning our church after school, and I often stayed with her while she cleaned until Mom could pick us up. Sometimes, my sister would give me a few dollars for helping clean. Other times, I would just explore. In our "office," in the very back corner of a lower shelf, I found a box of Chick Tracts and became very concerned about going to hell. So I rarely did anything bad.

It wasn't until I got into college that I even started to explore my own independence, and finally, in my early twenties, I got a serious boyfriend. We both lived off campus, and my mother had his phone number (in the time of landlines). On occasion, I would not happen to be at my own apartment very early in the morning when she tried to call. Inevitably, she would call his place. But my mother was sometimes not especially eager to know all truths... plus, I was twenty, so she sometimes supplied me with alibis.

"Hi... so... you're at Mark's, then?"
"Uh... yes."
"Oh. You must really like him if... if you get up so early to drive from your place, where you slept, to his place, where he slept, to.... make him breakfast?"
"Um.. right. That's what I did. I woke up, at my place, alone, like always, and came here THIS morning to make breakfast."
"Well. That's nice. And that's what happened. So..."


My father, on the other hand, was certain I was up to something, even when I wasn't and often didn't buy totally real alibis. I lived in an apartment during the school year and mostly also stayed for summer school so I wouldn't have to let got of the apartment. But one summer, I had to pack up everything and move back home. All of my things were stored in the garage, except for some suitcases I kept in my bedroom.

History: My mother also kept a flowerbed full of lush, bright pink periwinkles, which I loved. So that year, she had collected some seed pods from them and given them to me in a plastic baggie. I had planted a few in pots on my porch, but she had given me too many and I still had some, tucked away in my suitcase to use the next year.

So one day, the summer I'm at home, my dad sits me down in the living room, very seriously:

"Is there something you want to tell me?"
"Um... Happy Birthday. I love you, Dad."
"No. Is there something you want to tell me about things you might be doing?"
"Uhh... all right. Okay. So I changed my major again... I know that's going to add a semester but I really think I'm cut out for this writing thing."
"Look, kid... If you ever needed help... you know, if you needed to go somewhere and... get clean... you could tell me."
"What are you even talking about?" *surreptitiously sniffs armpit*
"I'm talking about this!" *shoves plastic baggie of periwinkle seeds in my face*
*Mom swings through living room with laundry* "Honey... *sigh* I told you those were periwinkle seeds... why are you doing this?"
*Dad ignores Mom* "Where did you get these!?"
"What? From Mom! She just said."
Lots of fighting and accusations ensue. Mom has to take Dad outside to show him other periwinkle pods so he can compare. Mom even admits that Dad brought the baggie to her a couple of nights before, exclaiming what are we going to do about this? And Mom said Plant them? which horrified Dad until she told him the were seeds from the flower bed, but apparently, he'd still been working up the nerve to sit me down to talk to me about drugs (at twenty)... Finally, he comes back to the living room and sits me down again.

"Are we good now? Can I go?"
"Yes. But just remember--if you ever need help or need to go someplace to, you know, get clean... you could tell me... Is there anything you want to tell me?"


So 1) What the hell, Dad? You showed those to mom and she told you they were periwinkle seeds and you still think I'm on drugs? 2) You really thought you could trick me into confessing to drug use by confronting me with periwinkle seeds that I full well know are periwinkle seeds? But 3) I guess it's nice to know if I ever did have a drug problem, I could tell Dad and he would help me with rehab? Comforting? I'm not sure.