I have pretty honest kids, I really do. It’s fairly rare I catch them being untruthful . . . one of them though, he blurs the line between honesty and deception every now and then. For instance, my coconut waters go missing, I find the empty containers in his room.

Me: “Stop taking my drinks.”

Him : “I didn’t.”

Me: “I found the empty cans in your room!”

Him: “Those are old.”

Me: “Old as in yesterday?”

Him: “I didn’t know they were yours.”

Me: “They are always mine.”

Him: “You didn’t say that this time.”

See, he gets me on technicalities. Empty cans from yesterday, technically old. I put them on the shelf without specifying they were mine (even though they always are) so technically, I didn’t tell him they were not for him. He is a master word weaver, if I could afford it, I would send him to law school. He would make a great lawyer.

When he was in his mid-teens I busted him mid-fib, I no longer remember what he was trying to deny, cover-up, make light of, or get out of, but what he said in a last-ditch effort to worm out of the situation was epic . . .

“It wasn’t a lie, it was just a subjective variation of the truth.”

My son, the smart, witty, and wonderful troll he is, succeeded. I lost my composure and started smiling. At least it was an almost admission he was practicing the art of deception, just a little.