The Imaginary Birds

I often wonder at the imaginations of children. How do they so effortlessly create magical worlds out of nothing? How is it so easy for them to string together innocent word dew drops to form honey so sweet you have no choice but to buy into it? I don't know how they learn to stretch the truth or flat out lie so convincingly. I think I read somewhere it has to do with survival of the fittest. They teach themselves to lie in order to make it through the rough existence of crayons and endless recess I guess. Now for adults, lying is second nature. It is a form of survival of the fittest, more so siding with societal self preservation. We know what it takes to make it in this world, fighting hard to conform and fit in. Making sure we appear sane and lucid when really we are just livin on a prayer. Heck, it's hard enough trying to figure out what to wear to pick your kid up on days you work from home (most of the time sweatpants still win) so you don't offend the other parents and administrators without having to constantly lie to keep the weirdness of your family from being known by the good folks at your child's school. Unfortunately, these specific set of circumstances collided and I found myself a co-conspirator in a fantastic imaginary world as designed by my three year old.

And so the story goes that one warm, sunny September afternoon I picked up Emma just like every other day (only this day was an office day so I was wearing appropriate, mature adult attire). Emma was playing near her new teacher. I smiled and did what I always do, prepare an elaborate scheme to get Emma to leave without throwing a fit. Today gave way to a surprisingly easy departure and we waved good-bye to her friends as we made our way into the school to grab her lunch box and the large quantity of art projects, beginning of the year school forms, and other random bits of paper that only ever make it to the front seat of my car. On this particular day, unknown to me, we were followed inside by her teacher taking another kid to the bathroom. This detail will become important later so keep it in the back of your mind while I host a brief intermission to provide a short back story.

Emma changed classrooms this year which meant all of her belongings in her cubby moved to a new cubby outside her new classroom. Now I'm not one to question cubby space usage, although I did notice a week or so ago that there was a box in her cubby that I hadn't put there. I questioned it at first but then it just blended into the wooden siding and it never crossed my mind again...until....

I reached in and grabbed that day's mountain of paper. Emma reached her hand in after and pulled out the box. It was a colorful box. It was heavy and made a noise when you shook it. "Look mommy it's our bird food!" "Oh you mean for the birds in your classroom." "No mommy, for OUR birds." Before I could even process what was going on...

*Enter Emma's teacher* "Oh yeah Emma told me you guys have birds. We don't have birds in the classroom any more so I gave her the food to take home to your birds." Had her teacher not been in the hallway at that exact moment my fried after work brain would have shaken off Emma's story and the bird food would have ended up back in her cubby, but at this point there was a lucid adult involved in this scenario. I also might not have mentioned this in detail but my brain logic and reasoning is diminished from working all day so at this point I'm not at my peak for adult conversation. Ok, maybe this is a lame excuse for what happened next because I have no idea how this happened except to assume it was a verbal reflex. Like at this point in my day I am reduced to responding "yeah yeah" to all of the cries of "look at me" and "watch this." So somehow having complete knowledge of the fact that we do not own birds as pets and never will with 4 dogs, I responded, "Oh yes, the birds. Thank you." It's like my mind went into autopilot and I entered the world of mindless agreement only this time I entered into the dangerous world of a toddler lie without fully understanding what was going on. I had somehow grabbed my toddler's outstretched hand and followed her through the looking glass. I had just let my child lead me into a very real lie. We had created imaginary birds.

Of course later that day I had to come clean with my husband when he came home and saw a box of bird seed sitting on the counter (pictures above.) After laughing hysterically for a while I got a bit of a (well deserved?) lecture. How could I lie about having birds and deprive some very deserving, well meaning birds from this food?!?! Little Billy or Jane at school might have birds that could have really used this food. At this point, I knew what had to be done but how does one undo a vicious lie about made up birds? I could not see a way out of this without dragging the Patterson name through the mud.

I ended up speaking to Emma about why she said we had birds. She said she wanted to get some birds to feed. I thought back to the birds at our local pool who we feed a couple of times and decided that was it, she had remembered our fine feathered friends at the pool and was just thinking of them. So in a way, we DID (?) have birds...to feed that is. Not a lie necessarily, just a small technicality. We did have birds to feed, just not any that reside at our house.

Well the next day when I went to pick Emma up, apparently she had shared our bird conversation with her teacher who is no fool (in fact being a preschool teacher she is sharp as a whip). Her stern, yet forgiving eyes looked up at me as I approached, "you guys don't have birds, do you?" There was no hiding and only a small window with which to save face. "No, we don't have birds but we do feed the birds outside."  "Ah, ok." And just like that, it was over. Emma has not been shunned and I managed to take a "misunderstanding" and revert it back to a happy ending Mary Poppins song. And next time, I will stop and think before blurting out whatever rolls off my tongue in a mindless afternoon haze.