Beauty and Truth, Truth Beauty?

On our way home from Greta's classmate's DOG's birthday party (Beauty is 13), I listened to them philosophize about an issue of great importance--Truth.

It began on our way to the dog-party with their eagerness to finally see the dog-owner's home to determine if she had told the Truth about owning a twenty-story jumping house with a gumball machine on the top floor. Perhaps she was lying. This "lying" business carries great weight with kindergarteners. A lie, fully revealed, is capable of evoking great feelings of injustice and anger, along with discussions of consequences. And, since I was realtively certain that we, in fact, would not find a twenty-story jumping house, I thought it would be best for me to intervene, lest we accost our sweet hostess in the first minutes of her party.

What to do? I taught the girls about hyperbole. Luckily, they listened with great interest, repeated the term, and thankfully "bought" the idea that sometime people exaggerate a great deal because they want to share a feeling of excitement. They concluded that it would be fine if there a mere place to jump and gum was somewhere on the premises.

As it often happens, their new understanding turned out to be less than permanent. On the way home, an hour later, Greta's brother was the offender against Truth. He told them that, "One time I actually rode on a dolohin standing up with a penguin on back."

Three authoritative voices chimed in with, "That's not true."

"I don't think you're telling the truth, Graham."

And the big one: "Graham, you are lying."

I interjected, "Well, it depends on your defintion of truth."

huh? There was silence in the car. Was Greta's mother actually going to defend a bald-faced lie?

I needed to continue before I got a call from another parent about why I said that it was OK to lie.

"You know, Graham probably imagined riding a dolphin, so in his imagination it is true. And, imaginations are great things. That's how we get great stories to read and listen to."

Greta didn't skip a beat, "Well, in my imagination the truth is that the boy (I wonder who?) was riding a dolphin, but he was really mean and he kept tightening a string around the dolphin's neck and he was killing the dolphin. But then a beautiful mermaid came and knocked the boy off and a shark was going to get the boy, but then the boy started getting the mermaid. And then he was hurting the mermaid, but the dolphin came to rescue the mermaid. The dolphin got the boy over to the shark and the shark ate the boy and the mermaid and dolphin met a unicorn who came down to give them flowers and stuff and took them on her back to her home and they lived with the unicorn and they lived happily ever after."

Moral? Lie if you want to, but make it good or the sharks will get you in the end.