Denials. They’re not just stupid homonymic clichés referencing northern African bodies of water. They’re also these cool things where you get to pretend something you did wasn’t actually a thing that happened, and if you say it loudly and repeatedly, sometimes people get sick of the whole topic and just go “yeah, whatever, fine. You weren’t the one who peed all over the bathroom floor even though you’re the only other person who lives here. Just shut the fuck up about it already.”
But sometimes the things we’ve done are just too blatant and too overwhelmingly important to pass off as being untrue.
At the age of five I pretended I’d been struck blind in one eye. Suffering from the mild Munchausen’s Syndrome that afflicts all attention-starved toddlers, I started screaming “I’M BLIND I’M BLIND I CAN’T SEE” while in kindergarten one morning. Confronted with evidence that I was full of shit – the teacher covering my “good” eye and having my “blind” eye track her finger – I denied the allegation that I could see. If only I’d known the word “ridiculous.” Even after a visit with my parents to a sight-confirming ophthalmologist (whom years later was revealed to have been in on the sting – talk about ABSCAM…), I continued to dissemble. Not being cognitively developed enough to understand they had me by the balls, I now denied that I was CURRENTLY blind in one eye, leaving unsaid but implied the possibility that I had miraculously recovered during the car ride over. Then I clammed up. I kept my head down and my mouth shut despite endless cajoling, hoping they’d eventually be distracted by “adult” concerns and forget the entire incident.
The threat of the removal of television for a week finally prompted some belated honesty. After my full disclosure they took away my TV privileges anyway. Pinkos.
My biggest handicap (besides, you know, being five) was a basic misunderstanding of plausible deniability. I maintained the fiction well past the point before which it could still be supported. I left myself zero wiggle room. Looking back on it now with the gutter wisdom of experience, I could cry at my amateurish attempt at damage control.
Any media professional will tell you I should have fessed up right away. The second the teacher called shenanigans my first move should have been to get ahead of the story. I might have been five, but I knew how to use a telephone. I could have rushed to the office, dialed my mom at work, and cried “I’ve done something bad. I’ve been feeling underappreciated and so I concocted a story. It was dishonest, but here I am now, telling you the truth. I’m five years old and sometimes I make mistakes. I’m ready to accept the consequences.” I probably still would have received some sort of punishment, but I’m willing to bet it would have been a slap on the wrist. No TV for a weekend, perhaps. Maybe even only for that evening. Parents (and people in general) are mostly willing to accept and forgive the mistakes we make, so long as we admit them forthrightly.
If I’d had a cadre of media consultants and professional political operatives and damage control experts and lawyers advising me, I’m sure they’d have had me admit what I’d done at the earliest opportunity and face the far-diminished consequences I would have been subject to. I could have been watching Sesame Street that very night.
But I was a five year old acting like a five year old. Luckily people (especially adults in major positions of authority) eventually grow up.
But sometimes the things we’ve done are just too blatant and too overwhelmingly important to pass off as being untrue.
At the age of five I pretended I’d been struck blind in one eye. Suffering from the mild Munchausen’s Syndrome that afflicts all attention-starved toddlers, I started screaming “I’M BLIND I’M BLIND I CAN’T SEE” while in kindergarten one morning. Confronted with evidence that I was full of shit – the teacher covering my “good” eye and having my “blind” eye track her finger – I denied the allegation that I could see. If only I’d known the word “ridiculous.” Even after a visit with my parents to a sight-confirming ophthalmologist (whom years later was revealed to have been in on the sting – talk about ABSCAM…), I continued to dissemble. Not being cognitively developed enough to understand they had me by the balls, I now denied that I was CURRENTLY blind in one eye, leaving unsaid but implied the possibility that I had miraculously recovered during the car ride over. Then I clammed up. I kept my head down and my mouth shut despite endless cajoling, hoping they’d eventually be distracted by “adult” concerns and forget the entire incident.
The threat of the removal of television for a week finally prompted some belated honesty. After my full disclosure they took away my TV privileges anyway. Pinkos.
My biggest handicap (besides, you know, being five) was a basic misunderstanding of plausible deniability. I maintained the fiction well past the point before which it could still be supported. I left myself zero wiggle room. Looking back on it now with the gutter wisdom of experience, I could cry at my amateurish attempt at damage control.
Any media professional will tell you I should have fessed up right away. The second the teacher called shenanigans my first move should have been to get ahead of the story. I might have been five, but I knew how to use a telephone. I could have rushed to the office, dialed my mom at work, and cried “I’ve done something bad. I’ve been feeling underappreciated and so I concocted a story. It was dishonest, but here I am now, telling you the truth. I’m five years old and sometimes I make mistakes. I’m ready to accept the consequences.” I probably still would have received some sort of punishment, but I’m willing to bet it would have been a slap on the wrist. No TV for a weekend, perhaps. Maybe even only for that evening. Parents (and people in general) are mostly willing to accept and forgive the mistakes we make, so long as we admit them forthrightly.
If I’d had a cadre of media consultants and professional political operatives and damage control experts and lawyers advising me, I’m sure they’d have had me admit what I’d done at the earliest opportunity and face the far-diminished consequences I would have been subject to. I could have been watching Sesame Street that very night.
But I was a five year old acting like a five year old. Luckily people (especially adults in major positions of authority) eventually grow up.
But do they, Fox? Do they!?? >_<
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