Lies we tell our children

The summer I was 9 I was out playing in the yard when my dad came outside to do some work on the house. Naturally he was in shorts, after all it was summer...in Washington...he's from Wisconsin. Any way, being the observant 9 year old that I was I noticed a rather large discoloration on the back of his leg. Roughly 4 inches above, below and including the back of the knee. It was a strange bean shape, and I'd never seen anything like it before.

Not only was I inquisitive but I wasn't afraid to ask questions. This was before people started really laughing at you in class for asking the infamous "no question is a dumb question" question. So, I asked my dad what the large mark on the back of his leg was. He told me that when he was a kid he had been bitten by a butterfly. A very large butterfly. Then he proceeded to go into detail about the size of this insect, using arm gestures and the whole nine.

Naturally fascinated I watched in horror as my dad recounted his vampire butterfly attack. It was so graphic that it caused me to question everything I knew about insects up to that point in my life. Which, granted wasn't much, but enough to know that butterflies weren't roughly the size of a bread box with fangs and attacked people for no reason. I contemplated this whole situation for days before asking my mom about it. To which she promptly replied "Dad's lying. It's a birthmark." Oh.

Why do we tell our children such lies? Probably because it's fun. It certainly caused my imagination to go into overdrive. And 16 years later, I can still remember the whole incident in detail down to the color of the shorts my dad was wearing...pink.