Mama Kat Prompt: The Big-Time Liar

The Mama Kat's Prompt for today: "write about a time someone duped you," thus the title of this memoir:

The Big-Time Liar

     As a child, I was quite gullible. Dupable, you might say. Being that I was the oldest girl and the fact that we lived far out in the country, made me accustomed to honest communication with just my parents. Being lied to was a foreign concept, which made me the perfect patsy when I started school.

      When I was in 3^rd grade, I was completely taken in by a classmate with a special penchant for story-telling. Her name was Robin, a copper-haired girl gifted with both ample imagination and a silver tongue--plus me, the willing believer. It was a fatal combination. I remember sitting at a table with Robin and 2 other girls playing go-fish one day when she pulled out “the item.” She kept it hidden in her hand as she whispered, “I have a fairy.”
     We leaned in, fascinated as she opened her hand to reveal a small clam shell about an inch in diameter. It had a rubber band around it to hold it closed---which should've been a dead giveaway if I'd been more savvy, but I wasn't. My disbelief was completely and perfectly suspended.

     “Do you want to see it?” she asked mysteriously.
      Of course, we all did.
      She removed the rubber band and opened the shell. Inside was a tightly wound strip of fabric, grayish in color, which she slowly unwound to reveal a white bead.
     “Ooooh," we all gasped, spellbound.
     "But it only turns into a fairy at night," Robin explained. Then she proceeded to describe this glorious winged beauty that would emerge, glowing and huge to float around her bedroom.
     We were properly awed. She had a personal fairy.

     Robin then carefully re-wrapped the bead, replaced it in the shell, then secured with the rubber band once more and tucked it away.

     She had me absolutely convinced her house was full of magnificent wonders, such as a giant slide that wound through-out her back yard, which ended on a trampoline and, of course, that magical fairy. I longed to go there and eventually was invited to stay-a-night. I rode the school bus to her house and encountered my first Pekingese dog. I'd never seen one before and had no idea it's pushed-in nose was a breed-trait. I assumed he'd been the victim of some tragic accident.

     "Whatever happened to your dogs nose?" I exclaimed.

      Robin replied, “He was watching Superman one day and decided to see if he could run through a brick wall.”

      I took this in as a reasonable, not knowing any better, but the thing I was really interested in was seeing that fantastic slide of hers. So, she led me to the back door and showed me. What I saw was a common swing set in a very small yard with an ordinary sized 5 foot slide next to it and no trampoline.

     “Where's that huge, fantastic slide you told me about? And the trampoline?” I asked, crushed with disappointment.

     She mumbled some excuse and quickly suggested an activity to distract me from this topic. She had a older teenage sister and we played a couple games I'd never played before: Uncle Wiggly and Candy Land. We were the only ones in the house until their Mom came home from work. That's when I discovered their mother was a divorced, single parent--which was amazing to me, since it was still a little uncommon at the time. I remember she had jet black hair, wore black cat-eye frame glasses and was carrying a bag of groceries from which she put together a quick dinner. Then that night, when Robin and I went to bed, I asked about seeing the fairy, something I was looking forward to, but I just got some excuse about why it wouldn't come out while I was there. Naturally, this fairy only showed herself to Robin.

     I returned home from my visit greatly disillusioned. I think I must've told my own mother all about it, because we still have a great laugh talking about all the whoppers Robin told that I fell for. 

     There was another good one she got me with, but that is a tale for another time.