Liar, Liar, Pants On Fire

I say I won't be blogging much this summer, and here I am, two days later. But this was too funny not to write about, and I didn't want to take any chances of forgetting it.

Hays has realized that being sick or hurt means sympathy from Mommy and Daddy. So now, every time he's in trouble, he suddenly becomes deathly ill or tragically injured. This is pretty common with kids, but lately, Hays's claims have become quite imaginative. Two of my favorites have occurred in the past two days.

Tuesday we took the world's most horrible trip to Target. Hays was apparently possessed by demons just before we got there, and screamed, cried and whined during the entire trip. I'm pretty sure no mother has ever sprinted through Target quite so fast. I was furious, and I let him know that, in no uncertain terms, on the drive home. The minute we got out of the car, I told him, "You are going to time out the second we walk in the door as punishment for your awful behavior!"

I watched him stand in the driveway, pondering this for a moment. Then he suddenly dropped to the ground and cried, "Owwwwww! Someone just hit me with a hammer! I'm huuuuurt!" A hammer? Really? A sudden, invisible hammer attack? That level of creative lying is skillful. Kind of impressive, in fact. But not impressive enough to excuse public fit-pitching, so I suppressed a smile and hauled him to time-out.

I figured he couldn't top the alleged hammer attack, but I was wrong. Not 24 hours later, he mounted another public protest when it was time to leave the park. This time my mom was along for the fun, and she got stuck carrying a crying, thrashing Hays to the car. He accidentally head-butted her while writhing and carrying on as she was buckling him into his car seat. I felt sorry for her, but not so much for him. I guess that he could sense this as we drove away and I admonished his tears with a cold-hearted, "Well, if you hadn't been acting like such a punk, you wouldn't have hurt yourself!" He replied with a lie of such stellar proportions- "I didn't! Yaya said she hates me!" that I was momentarily left speechless. Ummmm, yeah, sure. Yaya said she hated you. Yaya, who is so nice she would barely say she hates mosquitoes, or the bubonic plague, or Nazis, said she hates her four year old grandson. Nice try there, buddy.

We had to have a little chat then about lying. But honestly, I don't think it did much good. Because five minutes later when I told him not to throw his Power Ranger in the Publix parking lot, he told me, "I didn't throw it. The ghost did."