We try to be honest with our girls, we really do. We generally feel that if they're old enough to ask a question they're old enough to digest the answer. On those rare occasions when we don't think they are we go vague or cleverly change the subject. It's worked so far.

Our girls have never believed in Santa Claus.

All of which gives us a fair amount of credibility, and has made our girls vulnerable to misrepresentations on our part. Until now.

I'm not certain how it started, and so I'm inclined to blame my wife Theresa. It was, after all, her idea that we buy tickets to the local high school production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. We're all familiar with the story, as the book based on the HBO children's series is a family favorite.

We hadn't begun with deceptive intent. We just bought some tickets to a high school play. Theresa suggested that we keep the tickets a surprise.

The next few weeks we made oblique allusions to the impending drama, but no one appeared to catch on. Finally it was the morning of the performance.

The girls share a bedroom, and Theresa was in there helping them put away their clothes. As isn't particularly unusual there was some slight disagreement about something between girls, and so I asked Theresa if I should give them "a whuppin'."

The girls know it's less likely that I'll give them a whuppin' (which has never happened) than I'll almost burn the house down by putting too much wood in the wood stove (which happens occasionally).

Theresa said, "No, I think what we're going to do tonight is punishment enough."

I got all straight-faced, and semi-sorrowful, and told the girls that a new relative had moved onto the island and that we had to go over there for dinner. I continued, deceitful as The Grinch himself, that the relatives were members of an unusual religion and so had no television set.

Questions came hard and fast and I was entirely shameless in telling the girls that the relatives were old, and not young, had no children, and had no animals either.

Downstairs a few minutes later I heard Kasmira, at eleven the oldest, mutter, "They should at least have a cat."

It's been said that, once fallen, the pious sin more fervently than the sinner entrenched. Theresa joined me in the fall, and soon was informing the girls that for dinner we would be having "squid."

Desperate inquiries about desert were greeted with tales of "prune cookies," and then "with pineapple slices" as an after-thought. The girls were crestfallen, and I admit I wasn't even trying to bring them back with my suggestion that they could "just eat the pineapple slices and throw the rest of the cookie away."

Somewhere along the line, and then repeatedly, I had described the "new relatives" as "boring." The girls soon held them in suitable contempt.

Amelia, the youngest at four, determinedly announced that she was going to wear her "very ugliest dress."

Enough! I stepped right in and said, "Now look! Just because they're boring is no reason to be rude. I expect everyone to be polite." Theresa buried her head giggling in a couch cushion.

Once the girls were upstairs in their room our treachery knew no bounds. We discussed any number of bizarre characteristics, possible occupations, physical abnormalities and names for our new relatives, including but not limited to, having been an organ grinder, having the longest nose in the world as memorialized by The Guinness Book of World Records, and living in a house built entirely from dirt.

Fortunately the organ grinder ruse alerted me to a danger of our enterprise, and I wisely counseled Theresa, "We can't make it sound too nutty, or they'll be disappointed when it turns out there aren't any new relatives."

Sustained with this epiphany, and armed only with our morally dubious wits I informed the girls that Mrs. Toddman, for this is the name the dull relatives had been given, was a thimble enthusiast. I warned the girls to be prepared to spend hours hearing her tell of thimbles, and asked Theresa if she had a spare thimble that the girls might give Mrs. Toddman as a gift.

The Toddman's were an subject of intermittent discussion throughout the afternoon, and at one point Theresa objected to having to give away her "perfectly good thimbles." I reminded her that Mrs. Toddman might consider it rude if we arrived without one.

The girls went outside to play with the dog, and Theresa and I lay cackling on the couch. "I'm going to make them make Mrs. Toddman a card with a thimble on it!" I howled, "then we can keep it in the baby book to remind us of this great day!"

After awhile Alexandra, age six, came in with no small number of questions about Mrs. Toddman. It was becoming clear that she was now somewhat fond of the quirky old lady and her house full of thimbles.

"Oh, it won't be any fun at all," I said, and then utilizing my best Monty Python voce' imitated the quite nearly insane Mrs. Toddman saying "and this is my Great Red-Winged African thimble."

"Does she really have one of those?" Alexandra asked, even more impressed than before, then in near-awe, "She probably has a thousand of them."

I warned Alexandra not to act too interested in the thimbles or Mrs. Toddman might want to start coming over all the time and play thimbles.

"Oh darn, I guess I'll just have to make up a thimble game," Alexandra replied with perceptible joy. She decided to make a card with a thimble on it for Mrs. Toddman.

We ate dinner before we left, since Mrs. Toddman is such a bad cook. Theresa and I were genuinely concerned that our deception was going to backfire and not only would Alexandra become disheartened at the nonexistence of Mrs. Toddman, whom she was now calling Helga, but that we'd shot our credibility to hell with the girls forever.

We just didn't know how we'd gotten to this crazy place where we'd gambled so much for so little.

We stopped at the store, and I got some malt balls "just so we'll have something to eat over there instead of prune cookies....oh you know what! Someone told me that the high school is putting on A Midsummer Night's Dream" tonight."

The response was immediate and greater than could have been imagined. Alexandra particularly was beside herself, so desperate was she to attend.

She was almost weeping when I coyly asked her if she would rather see the play than "that nice Mrs. Toddman." Through the sniffles and gathering tears she assured me that she would.

"Well, I did happen to find these tickets...."

"I knew it!" Kasmira yelled, "There never really was any Toddmans!"

Now tears of joy flowed down Alexandra's face, and of relief probably down Amelia's. Through the artificially induced neurotic joy in the car the story came tumbling out, and the worst of it was that Kasmira informed us we were "pretty sly" with renewed respect.

The play itself was perfect. Teenagers intuitively understand the physical comedy of Shakespeare. Bottom hopelessly over-reached in his opening scene, Hermia was so incensed that she drew applause of the crowd in the midst of the cat fight.

We were all smiles and laughing as we headed across the parking lot to the waiting station wagon. "What was your favorite part?", I asked Amelia.

"I liked the puppy a lot, didn't you Papa?", she replied, referring, I think, to the ass-faced Bottom.

this warning to the deceitful originally appeared in Events Quarterly

the show is over, now go home