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Dear Dr Tinman: Help! How do I keep lying to my kids?

Dr Tinman

by Dr Tinman

21 Apr 05:49am

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Filed under: Dr Tinman, Remedies, Satire, Society, Weekend Punch

32 comments

Welcome to the second edition of Dr Tinman’s Ignorant Remedies for the Aching Soul.

When all else fails, blame this man

I am Dr Tinman, life doctor and former Power Ranger.

I shall be the light that guides you wide-eyed simpletons through this nightmarish tunnel of tears and sewerage we call life.

Before we move on to this week’s pitiably pathetic question, I would like to thank those readers who took the time to write to me and praise my advice-giving abilities.

John from Wangaratta, Victoria, said:

“What is this nonsense? I hope you don’t get paid for this crap. You make me sick.”

Amy from Charters Towers, Queensland, said:

“I was very offended by the fact you referenced a series of online medical courses by action star Dolph Lundgren. My mother was severely injured in a horrific accident involving a life-sized cut out of Mr Lundgren.”

And Eddie from Karatha, Western Australia, wrote:

“Is your moustache drawn on with Microsoft Paint?”

My replies, respectively, are: Yes. More common than you’d think. No comment.

Now that I’ve dealt with your petty complaints and inane emails, we shall move onto this week’s question.

Dear Dr Tinman,

My children recently found out that the Easter bunny isn’t real - now I’m worried they’ll find out about Santa, too. How do I make sure the secret remains?

Signed,

Imaginative.

Dear Imaginative,

Children are complex creatures – tiny monsters made out of circuitry and odours and sugar. I am told they are mass-produced in a factory on a small island off the coast of South America. As seen in the 2001 documentary “A.I. Artificial Intelligence”, all children – including the one they call “Haley Joel Osment” – are intelligently-designed horrors (in the same way that all Jude Laws are weird sex robots).

Using a strange and complicated series of equations, your brood appears to have deciphered the mystery surrounding the being we know as The Easter Bunny (or “La Criatura de la Diablo” – The Creature of the Devil – in certain parts of the world).

While you may be concerned about the loss of their Peter Pan-style childhood innocence, you needn’t fear. Both the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus were fabricated to distract children from those worries that would typically occupy their five-year-old minds, such as: peak oil, tensions in the Middle East, Macaulay Culkin’s general health and the production status of various Aaron Sorkin projects.

So do not fear if they discover that St Nicholas is more myth than man. They’ll survive.

When I was boy, there was no Santa Claus. My father, having been wounded in two separate wars by the same man with a white beard, refused to embrace any mythology about a person sporting such obnoxious facial hair.

As a result, he bought all our presents. When we were good, they were wonderful. Hand-crafted rocking horses, music boxes and antique bayonets would arrive in the most magnificent of ways.

When we were bad, however, carefully-wrapped horror would arrive. We would wake up on Christmas morning to tear the shiny wrapping from a large box of spiders. Yes, venomous Brazilian wondering spiders would spill out from the discarded packaging, scuttling across the floors and darting menacingly around our bare feet.

Oh, how my brother and I would weep. Even to this day, if I so much as catch a glimpse of Toby Maguire or briefly view the scene in Rocky where he fights Puerto Rican boxer Spider Rico, I involuntarily begin leaping onto tables and screaming obscenities in multiple languages (with an emphasis on region-specific dialects, of course).

But it had no effect on me and I barely remember it.

My point is, your children will retroactively engineer positive childhood Christmas memories to fit in with their middle-class friends. That is, of course, unless they are a member of one of those social circles where it is fashionable to recount tales of childhood disappointments in an effort to appear “strong”, “resilient” and “worthy of an Oprah-endorsed autobiography”.

Also worth keeping in mind: If a child misses out on a present from Santa, they’ll think the jolly red man believes them to be inferior to the millions of children he did give presents to.

But when you’re the one giving presents, they’ll know that they’re only inferior to one, maybe two, siblings.

In the end, however, this discussion is pointless. Everyone knows Tim Allen murdered Santa Claus in 1994.

I hope this has been helpful, Imaginative – particularly the bit about the spiders.

Kindest of warm regards,

Dr Tinman

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Most commented

32 comments

Show oldest | newest first

    • Geofford says:

      06:44am | 21/04/12

      Give them Kony to believe in!

      Let’s get Kony y’all!

      Reply

    • Phil says:

      06:27pm | 21/04/12

      Heck yeah!

    • acotrel says:

      07:00am | 21/04/12

      Kids who have been brought up in a rule bound authoritarian environment which has been reinforced with guit trips will tell lies, especially when their beloved and trusted role models set the example.  Liars have a problem - they must remember their lies.  Kids in particular, often know when they’ve been lied to, and as they grow up it often comes back to bite the liar.
      Setting boundaries for might be necessary sometimes, but there is always the danger of making errant behaviour more attractive, especially when lies are involved.  ‘You catch more flies with honey than vinegar’ -  that justifies telling lies about santa claus ! - Lies combined with bribes is really good stuff ?
      Perhaps parents just need to learn to become leaders ?

      Reply

    • ZSRenn says:

      09:45am | 21/04/12

      lol actorel you crack me up. Rabbiting on about liars and then on every other page supporting Julia the biggest liar of them all.

      “There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead”.

    • ZSRenn says:

      11:35am | 21/04/12

      @ Chris L

      “I don’t rule out the possibility of legislating a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, a market-based mechanism,” she said of the next parliament. “I rule out a carbon tax.”

      Please if you are going to edit what was said to make your point then you are part of the problem that Labor still does not understand.

      “Australians are smarter than this and they do not like to be patronised.”

      Especially me!

    • Chris L says:

      12:04pm | 21/04/12

      @ZSRenn - You’re the one taking half a sentence and changing the meaning. There was no doubt there was going to be a carbon reduction scheme and even Bolt acknowledged that. I doubt that people voted for Labor on the premise that they would do nothing toward carbon reduction because she quite clearly said that was her agenda.

      Just to head off accusations of being a party hack (you haven’t done so, but just in case) I didn’t vote for them in 2010. I’m just pointing out that the accusation that she lied about carbon reduction is, in itself, dishonest.

    • TimB says:

      01:17pm | 21/04/12

      “ZSRenn, do you cover your ears when the part about “committed to a market based mechanism” comes up?”

      No more than ALP supporters cover their ears when Julia’s promise to get a consensus from the elctorate first comes up.

      There is no consensus. We’re getting her stupid policy anyway. She lied Chris.

    • Chris L says:

      01:46pm | 21/04/12

      @TimB - On that you have a point. You have actually identified something she said which she went back on. It’s the “carbon tax lie” that I take issue with.

    • nihonin says:

      02:43pm | 21/04/12

      Chris L says:

        02:46pm | 21/04/12

        @TimB - On that you have a point. You have actually identified something she said which she went back on. It’s the “carbon tax lie” that I take issue with.

      Chris L, when taken in context, the whole statement is then a lie, is it not?

    • thatmosis says:

      03:20pm | 21/04/12

      Labor supporters dont have to cover their ears as their brains are wired somewhat differently to those that think for themselves. When joolia say’s “there will be no carbon tax under a government I lead” the Labor Supporters hear “we will give you heaps of money in a lump sum and you will love us.”
        When Joolia has a policy that fails the Labor Supporters think that AbbottAbbottAbbott was the one that put it into law and so it goes on. Argueing with a Labor Supporter is akin to bashing ones head against a brick wall and much more fun and instructive.

    • Chris L says:

      04:46pm | 21/04/12

      @nihonin - If the conditions of an election promise change after the polls I guess you could call it that. Such things happened with Howard as well. We tended to call them “broken promises” back then, or “changed circumstances” if we were feeling very charitable.

      The fact remains that carbon action was clearly on the agenda before the election.

    • TimB says:

      08:43pm | 21/04/12

      “The fact remains that carbon action was clearly on the agenda before the election. “

      Only if there was a consensus. The advent of minority government is irrelevant to that promise and there is no excuse for breaking it.

      It’s quite clear from the language used by Julia and Swannie paticularly in their furious rebuttles to Coalition accusations, that they were deliberately backing away from carbon pricing as an electoral issue. They knew it was poison and costing them votes.

      They were deliberatey misleading and deceptive. And now it’s all ‘Oh no we *really* meant this, not what you thought we meant. It’s the verbal equivalent of fine print. And completely invalidated anyway by the consensus issue.

    • acotrel says:

      04:21am | 22/04/12

      You lot have just got to be joking ? Tony Abbott with his ‘Juliar’ shoes something really slimy about the man. I wonder how you can live with it, and support this devious idiot who believes his own disingenuous nature will simply be accepted by people besides the ideologues.  His idea of ‘normal’ must be very strange ! :
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tc5ljcri6Nk

    • nihonin says:

      06:17am | 22/04/12

      ‘The fact remains that carbon action was clearly on the agenda before the election.’

      Agree Chris L, also agree with your comment of ‘broken promises or changed circumstances’, I always remember the ‘core, non core’ phrases as well, ah politics, got to love it lol.

    • ZSRenn says:

      09:06am | 22/04/12

      @ nilhonan. No it wasn’t but please keep it up the more you try to perpetuate the lie the more votes for the LNP

    • nihonin says:

      11:18am | 22/04/12

      ZSRenn says:

        10:06am | 22/04/12

        @ nilhonan. No it wasn’t but please keep it up the more you try to perpetuate the lie the more votes for the LNP

      Lol now I’m a Labor supporter, no wonder I don’t align myself with party, if I’m not one I’m the other, party sycophants….......love you one and all hahaha.

    • Chris L says:

      03:59pm | 22/04/12

      Don’t let it bother you Nihonin. People like ZSRenn consider Malcolm Turnbull to be a leftie and they probably think Abbott is dangerously centrist.

    • Michael says:

      09:23am | 23/04/12

      Alcotrel, do you have to butt into everything with your meaningless drivel? It’s humour, contibute more humour, or go back to the political wannabe posts.

    • Daniel says:

      08:19am | 21/04/12

      What were the Brazilian spiders wondering about?

      Reply

    • craig2 says:

      08:33am | 21/04/12

      I simply told a bunch of kids that he was killed in sleigh crash and their was no replacement for him, he was the only santa. One kid intelligently replied “is that why there are so many badly dressed santa’s every year, everybody wants to keep alive the idea of Santa alive?”. Who said kids are stupid?

      Reply

    • ZSRenn says:

      08:39am | 21/04/12

      My Brain Hurts

      Reply

    • TheOzTrucker says:

      08:50am | 21/04/12

      Maybe it’s just me. I don’t get it.

      Reply

    • Tubesteak says:

      09:10am | 21/04/12

      Just tell them that kids that don’t believe in Santa don’t get presents for Xmas

      Reply

    • Brian Taylor says:

      10:37am | 21/04/12

      it’s like when I used to take my kids to the Doc’s to get a needle, the nurse would tell them, “don’t worry, it won’t hurt.”
      what crap.
      I’d already told the kids that yes, it will sting for a short time, but it was something they had to have and I’d kiss them and hug them and wipe away their tears until they calmed down.
      I remember one young mum tell her child, it won’t hurt and when the kid got the needle, the expression on that child’s face clearly showed he was upset at his mum because yes it did hurt.
      better to be honest with the kids.
      all kids from an early age know that “santa” doesn’t really bring them toys and that mum and dad buy them.
      there’s a lot more to xmas than what you give your kids, it’s a time of school hoildays, good food and nice presants (if you’re lucky enough) even trying to con the kids into going to church at xmas time is a waste, because mostly the kids are too young to know better and all they want to do is going outside and play.
      I remember as a kid sitting in church trying my hardest not to fall alseep, I was that bored.
      it’s okay if a kid wants to believe in santa and god but mostly they grow out of both, and may well start believing in god if they so choose later in life.
      so don’t lie to little ones, little lies usually lead to bigger ones.

      Reply

    • Scotchfinger says:

      05:59pm | 21/04/12

      what is the difference between a lie and a story?

    • petemull@hotmail.com.au says:

      10:48am | 21/04/12

      I think you should get someone who is eminently qualified to talk about lying to give advice. The person with the best lying qualifications in the nation is the lady in the top job. It not only comes naturally to her, its in her DNA.

      Reply

    • Wilma J Craig says:

      11:25am | 21/04/12

      Tell them another few lies:
      Marriage is a commitment for life
      Love last forever
      Sex is Fun! Mummy & Daddy, headaches notwithstanding, have it every day.
      Sex does not end after the wedding takes place, it just seems like it.
      Mummy & Daddy are splitting up & getting a Divorce, but we still love each other and we both only want what is best for You.

      Reply

    • Wraithcat says:

      09:09pm | 21/04/12

      Not even remotely funny.

      Although I did have to laugh at the pupicity* of those who would hijack the comments, as if there wasn’t enough space for political ranting on other threads.

      *Its a new word that I made up. Use it often enough and it will get into the Oxford Dictionary.

      Reply

    • stephen says:

      11:44am | 22/04/12

      *It won’t, and you’re remotely funny ...just a little bit.

      Reminds me of an episode of Star Trek Generations where an alien being refers to Pickard et al as ‘Tinman’ ... the implication being that one is so called who cannot be understood except as in oblique messages of a third kind.
      Nice writing bro’, but I liked last week’s message better.
      Next week I’ll write a harder poem in response and you can call me buckethead.

      Reply

    • Daylight robbery says:

      12:58pm | 23/04/12

      I told my sister when we were kids that if she ate ants they’d come out her belly button much to her panic.

      Now’s shes a crack addict she thinks they are climbing under her skin.

      Reply
 
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