I have in my head a long list of movies most people have probably never watched that have left an indelible imprint on me. One of them is a 1993 flick called The Good Son, starring a 13-year-old McCauley Culkin and a 12-year-old Elijah Wood.
I’m one of those weird people who rewatches films. For example, it’s possible I’ve watched Cinema Paradiso more than 30 times. One of the film’s more memorable scenes is the one where the Elijah Wood character asks of his psychotherapist about his friend, “Would you say he is evil?” To which the old lady replies, “I don’t believe in evil.” Woods darkly responds, “You should.”
I have had a recurring debate with a friend about a closely related question for the past 24 years: are humans born “good”, and then corrupted by society, or are they fundamentally brutish beings who must be conditioned out of their innate sociopathic tendencies? A related question is whether children are natural-born liars or merely honest little angels corrupted by their upbringings. The anecdotal evidence I’ve witnessed is confusing.
For instance, I was once on a packed Durban bus in my late teens and among those unfortunate souls who had to stand. Every five minutes or so, someone kept contaminating the already stuffy atmosphere with especially deadly nuclear emissions.
The third time this happened, an incensed man decided to conduct an impromptu tribunal to get to the bottom of this abomination before we all suffocated. “Anishoni ngempela, ubani lona odlala ngothuvi bakithi?” (Who is busy playing bowel games, people?) he demanded. From somewhere close to the floor, a voice cried out, “Ugogo lo oshiphayo!” (Gran is the culprit!)
I do believe the children are our future, and that we should teach them well — but we should never let them lead the way
The voice was that of a two-year-old girl holding on to the back of her granny’s pinafore. Poor Gogo was mortified and started chastising the babbler sternly. The self-appointed prosecutor, struggling to stifle his giggles, intervened on behalf of the diminutive Judas by imploring the geriatric with a posterior vuvuzela to spare the rod.
Based on this evidence, the score is 1-0 in favour of my friend, who believes that out of the mouths of babes only truth comes. However, I think kids are incorrigible liars from birth, and I have no interest in empirical evidence in this regard. I am perfectly happy to rely on silly anecdotes to support my half-baked beliefs.
For instance, when he was about four years old, I saw my second-born dart out of the bathroom in a panic. I went in there to investigate, only to be met with orange foam bubbling inside the toilet bowl. It seems our little Neil deGrasse Tyson wannabe had emptied an entire bottle of Eno in there.
After flushing and cleaning up the mess, I followed him into the lounge and, in a non-threatening voice, asked him what had happened. Very calmly, the four-year-old pathological liar responded, “Baba, I don’t know. But I saw Vector climb out of the window when I went in there.” That’s right — our evil little Pinocchio pinned the effervescent crime on Vector, the villain from Despicable Me.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. Two years earlier, we were woken up by blood-curdling screams from his bedroom and found him covered in black ants. After I had cleaned him up, he swore he had no idea who had placed the half-eaten jam doughnuts under his pillow, or why the ants had congregated at the sticky residue around his mouth.
I guess the score between my friend and me is 1-1. I do believe the children are our future, and that we should teach them well — but we should never let them lead the way. Perhaps in time scientists will be able to identify the element in the human genome responsible for children being born liars, and I shall be vindicated.
After that breakthrough, we will be able to test the “honourable” members of the National Assembly and prove my assertion that at least 397 of them have had the same relationship with the truth from birth that the orange hot-air generator has with reality.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.