Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

The teachers I now sub for are the same teachers that taught me through middle school and high school. So when my former choir teachers screams that she "wants to see your eyeballs!" I spin on my heel and look at her in terror, always to the giggles of the students.

These teachers are the same teachers that gave me reading assignments and worksheets all through my scholastic career, and these same teachers now instruct me to pass out the same worksheets I did not so long ago just to, "ya know, eat up the time."

It's statements like these that make me wonder how often I was lied to as a youth. Under the impression that these worksheets and reading assignments were vital to my education and the success of my future, I worked diligently to complete them while my classmates through spit wads at each other.

I am reminded of the shock on my brother's face when, at 14, he learned that the "shark bites" he'd been eating at the each his entire life had, in fact, been fish sticks ordered by my dad with a wink to the waitress. The same shock flooded my brain when I realized that for years when Mom and I played games like "Count the Red Cars" on road trips, she just pulled a number out of the air although I had been vigorously counting every passing car on the Interstate. And I remember being told, too, that, "If you don't stop biting your nails, eventually they won't grow back."

I won't even get into the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus, and the Easter Bunny except to say that I decided to test the Tooth Fairy once by not telling anyone that there was a tooth under my pillow. Dismal failure, Tooth Fairy.

So, with all this knowledge of secrets and lies, you'd think that when a student asked me, "Is this really that important?" I'd tell them: no, not really; doing a crossword puzzle with vocabulary words related to the Cold War will not help you in any way advance your life. I'm now on "this side"-- having eaten the fruit from some metaphorical Tree of Knowledge-- and I could enlighten my students.

But I won't.

Because then they'd be maniacs. Because they already can't focus on their assignments even in the glaring threat that their very livelihood rests on the completion of these ten video facts (in FULL SENTENCES, please!).

Instead, I'll just carry on this tradition of adulthood, lying to those I need to control.