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C H APTER 9 111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 A Talent for the Lie WHEN WE CAME BACK TO SCHOOL AFTER THE HOUDAY FOR CHRISTMAS, Miss Amerine had each of us stand up in front of the room and tell our classmates what Santa Qaus had brought us on the birthday ofJesus. Here I saw my chance to reestablish my rightful position as first and foremost, and I did. I hadn't been given a chance to plan my remarks, but the pressure of the moment inspired me to outdo myself in originality and force. I began with the big one, the new bicycle, the Schwinn with all accessories including the horn in the console, moved to the red wagon with wooden side extensions, the Red Ryder air rifle, segued to the cap pistols (a matched pair), the pup tent which had been used in the war agairut the Japanese (complete with patched bullet holes from an attack which had been successfully foiled but not before gouts of blood stained the canvas), and was warming to a description of the pony, which abruptly ended when Miss Amerine broke in and made me sit down. "That's enough, Gerald," she told me. "Let somelxxly else have a chance to talk." I sat down, halted in mid-career, but not downcast by that fact. I figured it would take a heroic effort from anyone ofmy classmates ro match what I had been allowed ro register in public as my Christmas gifts, and I knew that not a one of them could make up as many lies as I had just done on the spur of the moment, not if they had a week to prepare, boW1d as they all were to the literaL When I got home that afternoon, I told my mother of my triumph, speaking so fast and stuttering so much she made me sit down to finish. I was surprised by her resp:mse, since what she said was that I had overdone it in describing all the gifts I had received from Santa Claus. "You know there is no Santa Claus, don't you, Geraldr' she said. "That's just a story for little boys and girls, like Nancy and Wilma, and you're old enough to know better than that." 38 A TALENT FOR THE LIE 39 1blustered my way through assuring her 1did know the truth of the lie she and my father had been perpetuating for years, and of course 1did know there was no kindly man who traveled about the world one day a year giving out presents ro people like me. But 1had never let myself think about that fact, and 1did know 1hadn't received even one of the things 1bragged about to my fourth-grade classmates, and 1knew in my bones that while 1was telling the lie 1believed it myself. And it made me feel good while doing it. 1could see the Schwinn bicycle 1never received, and 1could smell the pony in the backyard eating the weeds that grew there. 1did then and 1still can now, whenever 1want to, and sometimes at night waiting for sleep, 1 let that happen. The fact that my parents had been lying to me for years about the existence of such a myth didn't bother me. They had lied to me about other matters before, in particular to me and Nancy about the birth of our little sister Wilma, the coming of whom 1knew nothing about tmtil 1arrived home from school one day to find my mother and father absent and Aunt MayBelle waiting to tell me and Nancy where they were. "They have gone to the hospital to get a baby that nolxxly else wanted, you see," she said, "and they'll be home with her tomorrow." "What is itl" 1said. "It's a girl named Wilma." "I don't like that name," 1said. "Why did they want to get a baby nolxxly else wanted?" Nancy asked. ''We don't need a baby arotmd here. Tell them to leave it there at the hospitaL" Years later, on my first reading of Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure, 1 knew precisely why Lirtle Father Time had hanged himself upon learning ofthe birth ofanother child to Sue Bridehead. Like my sister Nancy, he thought the coming of the new child was made by choice, and he understood his parents were fools to get another one when they had any other option to pursue. That's one reason Nancy and...

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