The 3 Eared Cat and Other Tales

For a woman who values honesty and truth-telling, I find it ironic that I ended up with my husband. For the first year we dated, I could never be sure if I what I was hearing was genuine or fabricated. He blames his penchant for telling tall tales on the fact that he's Irish, which in his case makes Irish a synonym for sly and clever. I on the other hand am a skeptic and have developed a slightly suspicious outlook, which has nothing to do with the fact that I am Greek and everything to do with the fact that I have spent the last 10 years of my life with my bullshit detector on high alert (partially from working with teenagers and partially from living with Cunninghams).

Lucky for me that my stepchildren inherited their father's sense of humor and story telling prowess. Early on in our relationship my stepdaughter tried to scare me off. Teary-eyed she regaled me with stories of what a mean brute her daddy was. The one thing that saved me from turning on my heel and bolting out the door was that whenever she looked at him I could see her level of adoration, which weakened the effect of her stories. I have always had a knack for reading people and I knew better than to trust the word of a wiley 16 year old on anything. My teacher training came in handy there.

My stepson tried to pull his fair share of cons too. Most of his tales were too tall for belief; he was younger and had not fully sharpened those skills yet. As he got older, he became the king of coming up with excuses for missing school and not doing homework. Even when he was attending the school I worked in, it was a gamble as to whether or not he would attend his classes. With more than one of his senior classes he went into the final exam with a failing grade because of his homework allergy and came out with grades that could get him into college. I credit him with the first appearance of gray hairs on my head. When he graduated I did my happy dance; it was a show-stopper.

The kids were small potatoes compared to my husband. Early on I informed him that he could tell any story he wanted as long as he gave me some sort of signal that it was a just a story so I didn't come out looking like a fool. He respected my wishes there, but soon I didn't need a signal. I could just tell. Though he knew better than to try to take me in, there are a couple of stories he told his children that are legendary. 

When his son was in kindergarten, my husband told him that he was soldier in Vietnam (after watching Platoon). He explained to the boy how he was a war hero and killed the enemy. The boy was so impressed that he went to show and tell the next day and told his class how his dad was a killing machine. That was the first time my husband was called in for a parent-teacher conference. He didn't expect the 5 year old boy to repeat it, which just shows you who was naive there.

By far the worst was a story he told his daughter when she was about 6 years old. He had some old grainy photographs of a black cat he once had, sitting on the top of the couch, casting its shadow on the wall. To her innocent eyes, the shadow appeared to be a third ear. He had her convinced that he had once owned a very rare 3 eared cat. She showed all sorts of people that photo over the years and wouldn't believe anything other than what her father lead her to believe. Her mistake was showing the photo to me. She was 16 at the time she told me about the infamous 3 eared cat. I said I didn't believe her, so she went through all of her old photo albums until she found that picture. When she proudly showed it to me, I took one look at it and said, "Honey, that is just a shadow on the wall."

Was she ever mad. It is 10 years later and she still gets steamed when it's mentioned. It probably didn't help that about a month after the 3 eared cat was revealed to be a hoax it was Christmas and my husband thought it would be funny to get her a gag gift. He was always getting them gag gifts. Once when his daughter was young he bought her a Barbie doll as a gag. She was a tomboy and wanted G.I. Joe or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. She cried until she found out that Barbie wasn't her only present. That particular Christmas, you guessed it, he gave her a 3 eared cat. He bought 2 black and white beanie baby cats, cut the ear off of one and sewed it onto the other one. She still has that damn thing on her dresser to remind her not to take herself so seriously.

My husband is a charming man, lively and fun. Though I am 16 years his junior, I am the mature one, the fuddy duddy, the stick in the mud. He often tells me that he saved me, because my life would be too boring without him. That much is true. For an exaggerator and a story teller, he is the most honest and decent man I know. He is faultless in his love for his family and his ability to lighten my heart. All three of them are pretty great. Just shortly after we were married the kids were joking around telling me that I have become a Cunningham, I can never escape and that they had me now. The truth is they had me all along.