Sticky Situation Leads to Homemade Lie Detector

Arnie and I thought we’d been doing a pretty good job of instilling it in our boys to be truthful.

So far, when faced with two equally cherubic faces, each proclaiming “It wasn’t me,” for an assortment of sins, we’ve been able to discern correctly who committed the crime. By talking about how it’s wrong to lie and how it’s always better to tell the truth, we’ve been able to solve many mysteries, patting ourselves on the back for teaching these valuable lessons to our children.

Or so we thought. Unfortunately, that celebration may have been a bit premature.

It started when I, tired and cranky from a full day of housecleaning and laundry, sat back in the living room recliner to put my feet up and watch a Tivo’d episode of “The Closer.” (That Dep. Chief Brenda Lee Johnson gets her man every time!)

I was just starting to relax when I shifted in the recliner – and something wasn’t right. Somehow, I was stuck in place.

And when I stood up, what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a big gray wad of chewing gum stuck to my rear, stretching out like so much melted mozzarella to the seat of the chair.

I looked at my husband. My husband looked at me.

“BOYS!!!” we declared in unison at the top of our voices.

Into the living room bounded five-year-old Dylan and four-year-old Conner, smiling happily, wearing capes and carrying their Spiderman and Batman action figures. (I think they pull out their extra cuteness from the reserves for moments like this.) But I wouldn’t let it keep me from the business at hand.

“Somebody,” I began, “lost their chewing gum in the chair, and I found it. Do you know who this gum belongs to?” I ask, pointing at exhibit A.

Wide-eyed innocence.

“No, Mommy. It wasn’t me.” This from Conner.

A short pause, and then this from Dylan: “It wasn’t me either.”

I raised my left eyebrow. Trying again, I appealed to their sense of right and wrong.

“We know one of you put the gum in the chair, because I didn’t do it, and Dad didn’t do it,” I stated in my most authoritarian voice. “It will be much better for you to admit who did it then to get punished for the gum and for the lie.”

Again, I received two solemn, innocent faces and a duet of “It wasn’t me.”

At this time Arnie steps in. He wrinkles his brow, frowns, and puts on his best Serious Dad face. This look would normally invoke our boys to confessing to everything from sneaking the last cookie to being the second shooter on the grassy knoll.

And as he asks the question again, still no one’s forthcoming. Although Dylan is starting to squirm.

Perplexed, I try to appeal to their consciences.

“It sure hurts Mommy’s feelings that somebody accidentally left this gum in the chair and won’t tell the truth’ says I, giving them both the sad eyes.

But they’re not buying. Just as resolved, they stand still like statues.

“It wasn’t me, Mommy,” Conner says, as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.

“It wasn’t me either,” Dylan says, looking at his toes.

Dylan’s less convincing demeanor causes me lean my verdict toward him. But still, I’m not sure. What would Brenda Lee do?

Examining the evidence, I removed the wad of gum as best as I could from the chair and my pants. Rolling it into a ball, I gave it the eyeball, and then took a sniff.

The unmistakable scent of Juicy Fruit threw me for a loop. This is not a brand of gum that either of us keeps around the house. Where did it come from? Now in addition to the identity of the chewer, we’re faced with this new mystery – where did Dylan or Conner, whoever the guilty party may be, get the goods?

Figuring the Juicy Fruit’s unique scent may be lingering on the guilty gum chewer as well as the gum, I ask each one of them to step forward and perform my own breath-alyzer examination.

Unfortunately, neither of them had breath that smelled like Juicy Fruit. To be honest, each of them could’ve used a Tic-Tac.

This discovery led to a new hypothesis: Could it be that both my little angels are telling the truth? Could I have sat in the gum somewhere in public and, oblivious to it all day, just found it when sitting down to rest in the recliner? Is it possible? Could it be?

Naaah. Somebody just needs to fess up.

Arnie, tired of the delay in finding the verdict, brings out the big guns. He informs the accused:

“I am going to hook this piece of gum up to my lie detector, and it will be able to tell me whose it is,” he says, in all seriousness. “I won’t punish you for the gum if you tell the truth now. But if I have to wait for the detector to tell me, it’s going to mean trouble.”

No confessions. So Arnie gets to work.

Grabbing a couple of wires and a connector box from the assorted items in his junk drawer, he concocts the lie detecting device. The boys’ eyes widen as they watch him plunge two ends of the wires into the ball of gum.

“Now, show me your fingernails,” Arnie says, “And when I hold this over them, it will show me which one of you did it.”

Conner immediately puts his hands out, obliging.

Dylan, with a look of horror on his face, refuses. “I don’t want to, Daddy.”

Aha.

Arnie and I give each other the look. We believe we have found the guilty party.

“I’m giving you one last chance,” Arnie tells them. We’re both looking into Dylan’s eyes at this point. “If you tell the truth, I won’t be mad. But if you don’t, somebody is going to get a spanking.”

Total silence filled the room for the next 15 seconds. So Arnie held the lie detector over Conner’s fingers. Then he held it over Dylan’s.

“I now know for sure who did it,” Arnie announces. “Does anybody have something to say?”

“It wasn’t me, Daddy,” says Conner, this time looking away quickly to avoid eye contact.

“It wasn’t me either,” whispers Dylan, staring at the floor.

We can’t believe the lie detector failed to inspire the confession. We’d planned an evening at McDonalds and then bringing home a family video from the Red Box… But in light of the evening’s events, Arnie told the boys we’d be eating cold bologna sandwiches and no one was going to watch anything on TV until the culprit confessed.

Still clutching their pleas of innocence, both boys were sent to their bedroom.

Surely this change in the plans would evoke Dylan to tell the truth. There’s nothing he likes better than a trip to “Miss Donalds” and the Red Box…

If not, I was running out of ideas to instill truth telling. We’d gone through our whole repertoire. Only things left were the bright shiny light in the eyes… Or waterboarding.

About 30 minutes into their banishment to their bedroom, the guilty party came forward.

“It was me, Daddy,” Conner said. “I’m sorry I put my gum in the chair. And I’m sorry I lied.”

Arnie and I looked at our son and then at each other.

How were we not able to tell? We’d both concluded by the preponderance of the evidence – circumstantial as it was -- that poor Dylan was guilty, when in fact Conner was the one.

Two thoughts crept immediately into my mind. 1. Good thing we didn’t come right out and accuse Dylan – or worse yet, punish him -- for the lie. 2. We’re going to have to come up with some better ways of reaching the truth, because obviously our ability to read body language is lacking. And 3. Our younger son could have a heck of a career playing poker.

We resolved there would be no spanking since the confession came forth. But since it came forth so late, sentencing included no trip to the Red Box, and no TV. And no more gum for quite some time.

Obviously, Arnie and I have a long way to go before we’ll be able to do much patting ourselves on the back. As parents of preschoolers, we’re just getting into the game. We haven’t even begun to go whitewater rafting through those turbulent teen years.

And I’m sure as our kids grow up, there will be more instances of figuring out “who done it,” concerning items of much greater importance than misplaced gum.

I just have to pray each day that God will give us wisdom to hug and kiss our kids when they need it, punish them when they need it, and love them all the time. I hope the lessons we’re trying to teach about telling the truth in their pre-school days will carry over into their adult lives.

I may never have the intuition of “The Closer,” but I am so happy to have the opportunity just to be Dylan & Conner’s mom. I’m doing the best I can.

And that’s the truth.

But would a foot by any other name still smell as sweet?

Discoveries are made sometimes under the most absurd circumstances.

Take, for instance, my recent discovery that there is a part of the body that has no name.

This discovery was made while talking to my friend, who wishes to remain anonymous.

It seems an episode of unbridled laziness has nearly cost her the top of her foot.

It started out innocently enough. All she intended to accomplish was to feed some burritos (left over from supper – not their usual fare) to her dogs.

However, it was raining.

(The plot thickens.) She didn’t feel particularly inclined to expound the energy of putting on a pair of shoes for just the two or three steps out on the back porch to give the burritos a heave.

So, she conjectured the idea that she would deftly take one giant step out onto the middle of the porch, give the burritos a “Grecian throw,” and then pirouette back inside the house, dainty as could be.

All went well at first. She took her giant step out onto the porch, hoisted the burritos through the air. But somehow, things went downhill from there.

Rather than making a dainty pirouette, somehow the foot intended to remain planted on the kitchen floor went slipping away. The other foot, bearing her weight to keep her from wiping out, was dragged upside down into the house across the bricks and metal doorplate.

Ouch.

She likened the top of her foot to ground beef.

It was at that point that I realized this body part has no name.

And somewhat startled by this discovery, my friend agreed with me. There is no name for this part of the body. No title that either one of us could think of other than “top of the foot.”

Think about this for a moment. Somehow a vital yet misunderstood and underappreciated body part has gone unnamed for all time.

What is it about the top of the foot that gets no recognition? Every other foot part has its own name. You have your heel, ankle, toes, sole, even a ball and an arch for the part that sticks up underneath. Yet the poor “top of the foot” has no moniker.

Now we got to thinking that somebody should do something. Everything from your scalp to your toenail has a name, and so, by gollies, should the top of the foot.

We could even write a song about it.

“Now I’m hopping through the desert on a foot with no name…”

After at least a minute or two of thorough research and polling random passers by for nominations, I think the top of the foot should hereupon be named the roof.

It makes as much sense as any other name, especially since it is on top of the foot. And if a nose can have a bridge, then a foot surely can have a roof.

It also makes sense in my friend’s predicament. When someone asks what happened to her foot, she can just tell them she fell on her roof.

Which leads to another medical question: Is the roof an area of the body that could be affected by shingles?

And if a brown recluse spider crawled across the top of your foot, would that be considered a fiddler on your roof?

Well, I don’t know about that. But I, for one, will sleep better tonight knowing that the top of the foot now has its own name.

And you should be glad, too. Knowing this fact makes you smarter than the average bear. You could say it gives you a “leg up” on the competition.

And if anybody questions the authenticity of this claim to a name, send them to me. I’ll tell them, “I toed you so.”