Lying to Children to get them to Behave

I was just at the local What-passes-for-a-supermarket-in-Vienna where I bought two 500cc bottles of Diet Coke, bananas and Kaiser Alexander pears.

No idea who Kaiser Alexander was, but his pears look like little butts. I was going to show you here, I even scanned one in on my office scanner, but it didn’t capture the… buttness (posteriority) of the fruit, so I scrapped that idea. Delightful little fruits. Still green, I’ll eat them in a few days.

But the pears reminded me that I’d been intending to post something here with the above title further buttressing my theory that all fiction, and especially fairy tales, originates in the efforts of parents to talk their three-year-olds into doing things they are unwilling to do.

It was one of those situations where I am both an active participant and an observer, in this case observing the quality of my discourse disintegrate in three easy steps from what started out as a logical argument.

Me: “Gamma, stop putting that cord in your mouth, Cosmo (cat) has been playing with that and it’s dirty. You’ll get germs.”

Gamma: [chewing sounds]

Me: “Cosmo maybe has worms, you could get worms, parasites, you know?”

Gamma: [more chewing sounds]

Me: [guiltily, in a single-long-phrase] “The worms will crawl out your bottom at night when you’re asleep and eat all your Easter eggs.”

Gamma: “pitooey!”

score: a guilty two points for Me.

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