The Ugly Truth . . .

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We had an incident in the house last night.  And it got ugly. I think writing about it will help me purge myself of the negativity I'm feeling towards two individuals of the dependant variety who will not be named. Instead, for story telling purposes, we'll just call them Conner and Hayley.

First, some background:

I spent much of Saturday {and I'm ashamed to admit a portion of Sunday} trying to lift this house out of its perpetual state of chaos and insanity because I had two lovely women coming to pay me a visit.  Since they are both readers of this silly-little-blog-about-nothing {one I'd never even met in real life}, I thought I should at least attempt to get the house in somewhat of a blog worthy state. You know - so the pictures on the computer and the actual thing didn't seem like two completely different realities.

At 4:00 yesterday I went down to the basement to see if the young ones had cleaned up the legos.  Blast those miniscule foot impalers - they are the curse of my life! Luckily, the job was well underway, thanks to a little freckly boy whose nickname might have something to do with canines.

This is where the story gets interesting.  Somehow, instead of cleaning up, 'Conner' and 'Haley' had managed to get down the Twister game, rearrange the furniture, throw the spinner under a chair and walk off leaving the polka dotted mat in a crumpled heap.

I called them both down and asked one little question that would prove to be the downfall of the duo:

"Who got this game out?"

I know, I know.  It's really so easy, right?  Not for these two. Never for these two. First came the finger pointing and "He did!" followed by, "No I didn't you liar, you did!" after which came the reasons and justifications and rationalizations until I wanted to hang them both up by their fingernails and walk away. Instead I took a deep breath, summoned all my mean mom powers and calmly told them both to go to their rooms until they could figure out the truth.

Initially I wanted to know who got the game down because that person needed to put the game away.  Simple as that.  But now I was dealing with something entirely different.  Now I was dealing with a little white lie told by a child who didn't want to put the game away and was willing to let a sibling take the fall for it.

But which child?

I wish I could tell you. Two hours of Oscar worthy acting and a little-white-lie-turned-huge later and the Hubby and I still had no admittor. I really, really am not a fan of blatant dishonesty. Really. Dinner was served and enjoyed by four family members while two sat upstairs crying and whispering mean things in each other's general direction.

I just wanted one person to do the right thing, but they did not. Neither 'Connor' nor 'Haley' ever came down and said, "It was me mom."  After they were in bed with the heaving breath of crying aftershocks, I felt sad.  Sad that no one came forward with the truth or to even an agreement on what the truth was.  Sad that sometimes it is hard for my kids be truthful. Sad that one of the two would willingly sacrifice the other, watching them crying, insisting they were telling the truth.

It was totally awful  and I have yet to recover. Stupid Twister {the game that ties me up in knots.}