The Lie: That was your new best friend? She seems nice.

The Truth: She seems abhorrent. Every September, without fail, Olivia manages to befriend the single most intolerable child in her class, resulting in my having to endure several months of abject torture – incessant questions, off-key singing, depletion of my snack supplies, etc. This latest one, Kacy, is a real terror. Just the other day, as I attempted to pick Olivia up from school, Kacy (a regrettable name for a regrettable child) accosted me without provocation and demanded to know why, if I’m a dad, I’m so young-looking. Another father might’ve found flattery in her question, but that would be to ignore its more insidious implication: that I’m woefully inexperienced, obviously irresponsible, and generally unfit for parenthood. While all of this may be true, I take umbrage at my qualifications as an adult being impugned by someone who’s only been out of diapers for five years. (And I’m giving her the benefit of the doubt on that one.)

Fortunately, these dubious friendships tend to unravel by late autumn or early winter, at which point the parasitic locust for whom Olivia had so recently professed unending affection falls out of her favor, presumably then moving on to deplete some other father’s snack supplies.

The Lie: In baseball, they’re called “runs.” They’re completely different than “points.”

The Truth: They’re exactly the same as points. There’s no reason to call them anything besides points, yet we insist on calling them runs. Additionally, we call a referee an “umpire,” a coach a “manager,” and an assistant coach a “coach” – all of which we do for no other reason than to annoy fans of other sports. The vocabulary of baseball is an arcane lexicon full of bizarre, vaguely erotic terms like suicide squeeze and backdoor slider. And it’s crucial that you learn them all.

Given the genes he’s inheriting, my son won’t ever play professional baseball, but he might yet develop his old man’s rare talent for pointing out the shortcomings of those who do. Why waste time with his athletics when all he’ll really need are his acerbics? Other dads play catch with their sons; I teach my son how to yell at the T.V. in a fluent and articulate manner.

The Lie: No, we just thought it made sense for her to buy your clothes and me to buy your school supplies. It has nothing to do with me being “more smarter.”

The Truth: It has everything to do with me being more smarter. Thank you, Olivia, for implicitly lending your support to that theory by merely posing the question in those terms. Although Michelle would never admit it, I think it’s fair to assume that her assignment to me of certain parental tasks (buying the graph paper and the calculators, for example, while she buys the raincoats and the shoes) is tantamount to a tacit acknowledgment of our respective positions on the ol’ cognitive continuum. If it makes her feel better, she can tell herself it’s because my fashion sense is lacking. (Believe me, she can – she spent many years conveying that sentiment to me in innumerable varied and creative ways.)

As for Olivia’s usage of the double comparative “more smarter,” I think it follows that I’m the less culpable party with respect to that any other grammatical calamities my children may produce.

The Lie: Um… the tooth fairy might’ve been a little too busy last night.

The Truth: The tooth fairy might’ve been a little too drunk last night. As I realized upon hearing my daughter’s despondent wail this morning, my recent habit of enjoying a Deadwood episode (or two) and a glass of bourbon (or five) before going to bed isn’t necessarily conducive to remembering to perform all of one’s late-night parental responsibilities. It’s probably best I forgot, though; Olivia’s despair upon waking up this morning a dollar poorer than she anticipated being was surely less traumatic than it would’ve been to be roused from her slumber at 2:00 AM by her bourbon-addled daddy fumbling awkwardly under her pillow.

The kids are at their mother’s tonight, so maybe the tooth fairy will redeem herself on Michelle’s watch. I’m sure I’ll get an angry phone call from her once Olivia relates the disappointing episode, but I remain hopeful that the unpleasantness of being chewed out for my incompetence as a father will be offset by the comfort in knowing I spent one less hard-earned dollar on an infantile ritual of dubious origin.

The Lie: Your haircut looks great.

The Truth: His haircut looks horrendous. I can’t believe how misshapen it is. It looks almost surreal, or cubist, as if Picasso was his stylist. Fortunately, he’s four years old, and couldn’t care less what his hair looks like. (I doubt, however, that I’ll be able to say the same for his mother.)

When Shauna learned that I had a son, she insisted I bring him in for a trim – a trim that turned into a full-scale mutilation. Figuring the first time had been a fluke, I brought him back in a month later, to further disastrous results. I can’t take him somewhere else, though, because I don’t want to risk offending Shauna; she does such a great job on my hair that I need to stay in her good graces. Why she cuts my hair well and butchers my son’s, however, is beyond me.

(Actually, maybe I just think she cuts my hair well because the shorter she makes it, the less glaring is the recession of my hairline. If that’s the case, then Troy’s got about fifteen years of abstract expressionist hair to enjoy before he joins his old man on the one-way train to Baldwinsville.)

The Lie: We could go see a movie, or we could play mini-golf. Either one sounds good.

The Truth: Neither one sounds good, as neither one involves me going to the bar and watching the final game of the Sox/Yankees series. Sometimes I think Michelle deliberately schedules my days with the kids to conflict with crucial sporting events. That’s probably flawed thinking, though, since it rests on the assumption that she remembers which sports teams I like, which she proved entirely unable to do during seven years of marriage.

I’ve tried watching the game at home with the kids, but it’s always a total debacle. Olivia insists that we switch to Nickelodeon during the commercials and becomes indignant when I attempt to switch back if it’s an episode of iCarly she hasn’t seen before. Troy, meanwhile, often seems interested in what’s going on, but he suffers from a total incomprehension of strategy or of important statistical milestones. It’s like watching hockey with an Italian guy or something. Very unsatisfying.

The Lie: Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can never hurt you.

The Truth: “Sticks” aren’t going to break anybody’s bones. What misguided person originated that phrase? How big were these sticks that he was dealing with? If they were sizable enough to break someone’s bones, then they were logs, not sticks. “Logs and stones may break your bones” paints a much more accurate picture. If I’m going to ply my teary-eyed son with dubious axioms, I figure I should at least get the semantics right.

Also, the part about words never hurting you – that’s obviously false as well. I’m probably doing Troy a disservice telling him that one, since words are going to be hurting him his whole life. He thinks “butt face” was hurtful? Wait til he hears “we have to let you go.” Or even worse: “I don’t love you anymore.” That wasn’t the most pleasant moment I’ve ever experienced. I wish she would’ve just called me a “butt face” and stormed out.