#Scintilla13: Don’t always believe your older siblings

I am participating in the Scintilla Project, a fortnight of storytelling. There will be writing prompts every day for the next two weeks. You can follow along on Twitter @ScintillaHQ and by searching the #scintilla13 hashtag for other participants and their stories.

Prompt: 1. What’s the biggest lie you’ve ever told? Why? Would you tell the truth now, if you could?

It was a warm summer day, there was a little breeze going through my great-aunt’s backyard. The sun was shining and birds were chirping happily in the trees. The tall trees around the backyard were swaying in the wind.

We were both kneeling on the paved ground, leaning forward on our dirty, chubby hands, eyes fixated on a thin black line that was meandering towards a small hole in the concrete.

“It’s moving”, my sister said. I tilted my head and squinted. I could see tiny little black dots wiggling along, not one breaking ranks, like they were strung on an invisible thread that spun from one side of the patio to the other.

“How do they know where to go?”, she asked.

“They play the telephone games.” OBVIOUSLY.

“Can they hear and talk?”, she inquired.

“Of course”, I said knowingly.

“I can’t see if they have ears.”

“They’re so small that you can’t see them.”

“Look, this one is carrying a white… something. They must be strong. It’s almost the size of its body”,she noted.

“It’s food.”

“What kind of food?”

“Cheese.”

“How do you know this?”

“I just know.”

“What are they?”.

“Those are lions, [silly]”, I lectured my sister with a hint of a condescending tone.*

We were not even 3 years old.

I cannot quite recall how long my sister believed the things that were coming out of my mouth, but I was hell-bent to answer all her questions diligently, even it it meant to make things up. I was not going to admit defeat and confess that there were things I didn’t know yet either.
Obviously, I did not do that with ill-intentions or any sort of malevolence, but I’d rather felt the duty as her older sister, if only by 2 minutes, to satisfy her curiosity.

* All but the last two lines of this conversation may or may not have happened this way. I don’t recall deliberately lying to my sister, but I do remember telling her with a hint of arrogance that the ants we were looking at where indeed lions. I am pretty sure I believed it at the time, too. I don’t know when she – or I for that matter – found out the truth.