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I was sitting with my daughter this morning, reading books together. The pictures that were up in her old room were propped against the wall. When we get round to it they will be put on the wall in the new room, but they’re on a long to-do list. There are three cartoons of various Muppets and a photograph of Phoebe with her grandmother Joy. We looked at the pictures.
She pointed at one of the Muppet pictures. “I drew that myself, “ she told me.
“Really?” I said.
“Yes, I painted that myself.”
“It’s really good Phoebe. That’s amazing.”
She pointed at a second Muppet, “I painted that myself.”
“You did that one too?”
“Yes.”
“I had no idea.”
She also claimed to have painted the third Muppet picture and also, even more daringly, she claimed to have painted the photo.
“That’s almost unbelievable,” I told her, “That one looks so real it’s like a photo.”
“No, I painted it,” lied my daughter.
Up until that point I thought that it was possible that she had somehow been responsible for the creation of the Muppets and was speaking figuratively. Perhaps she was a reincarnation of Jim Henson. Don’t close your mind to any possibility.
But I was pretty certain that she hadn’t painted the photo. I’ve seen her paintings and they are frankly shit. It was possible that she’d somehow fluked three Muppets, even though she’s never seen the Muppets (unless she’s Jim Henson reincarnated), but not that she’d daubed her crayons or face paint into something that so closely resembled real life.
But like President Trump, her lies were so brazen that I didn’t want to look like a potential idiot by refuting them. I actually admired her for the shamelessness of the untruths. Her first or at least her boldest lie. There will be more to come and it may be a while before one slips through. But for now I wanted her to think I’d been taken in.
And to be fair I still wasn’t 100% sure and was thinking of all the money she could make us if she really is a prodigy.
