by
An old girlfriend of mine
still believed in the Easter Bunny when she was ten.
So fervently did she believe,
that she got into a big argument at school with her friends who knew better.
She went home and told her mother,
who chose that moment to tell her the Easter Bunny was a myth-
a moment of utter humiliation.
As a parent, what do you do?
If you tell your kids the truth about Santa or the Easter Bunny,
you risk ruining the whole game for them.
But if you lie, what does that teach them about honesty?
I've never been a real father,
but I have played the role of parent-like entity.
I used to drive a 4-year-old girl named Bo
to daycare in the morning, and we talked about stuff.
One morning she asked me if I believed in the Easter Bunny.
I said "no, but I could be wrong."
She asked why.
"Because I've never seen the Easter Bunny."
"My friend Briny has."
"Oh," I said, "what did he look like?"
"He was big and white
and had a bag of chocolate eggs."
"Really?
I wonder where he got all those eggs?
I mean, bunnies don't lay eggs."
"they don't?"
She looked like she was about to burst into tears.
"I know," I said, "he gets them from Easter Chickens."
She'd never heard of Easter Chickens before,
so she was a bit skeptical-and I didn't push it.
And I thought I'd escaped unscathed
until I found out her real dad was furious at me
for infecting his daughter with my Easter Bunny atheism.
Another time I got in even worse trouble.
We were driving to daycare,
and Bo asked me about my grandmother.
I said, "my grandma's dead."
"Why?"
"She got old."
"Will my grandma die?"
"Yeah, but probably not for a long time-
everyone does eventually."
"Even my mummy?"
And I thought, "oh man, how am I going to get out of this one."
So I said, "your mummy's not going to die for a long, long time."
And she said, "but I would miss my mummy if she died."
And she was crying, and what do you do?
Especially when it's not even your kid.
How do you talk to a child about death
at that horrifying moment when the concept sticks.
We got to daycare and I found a quiet room
and we sat and talked about life and death.
She asked me, "Am I going to die?"
"Not for a long, long, long time," I said.
"What happens to you when you die?"
"I don't know."
I wanted more than anything to comfort her
with a beautiful vision of heaven,
where she and her mummy could be together forever.
But I don't believe in it, and I do believe in being honest to children. So I told her that some people think
there's a place called heaven that people go, but I wasn't so sure.
She thought about it for a while.
Then she said that maybe she wouldn't die.
And I said, well, maybe not.
Then I took her out to play with her friends and I went off to work.
She's nine now.
Still believes in the Easter Bunny. And Santa Claus. And fairies.
I don't know if she thinks she's going to die some day.
We've both kind of avoided the subject since then.
BACK ANNOUNCE (12 words): Matt Hirshberg doesn't believe in fairies, but he's thinking of living forever.