The Pleasure of Parents telling happy lies

It’s tough when your children discover your school records and realize that you were not the academic genius you’d always claimed to be.

All parents fib. About how good they were in school and how they were diligent and studied hard and never squandered their time and always did their homework and swotted for the exams and the children, bless them in their innocence, fall for this load of crock and bury their noses in their work because Mummy and Daddy were so smart.

It is amazing how after some years of telling this blatant fib, we believe it ourselves. It is a fib bathed in good intentions, we want the children to understand the need to do well in school and our parents did it to us. It is like it was a family heirloom handed from generation to generation.

I was good at maths, I could do sums in my head, I used to say, while they dripped liquid awe.

I always came in the top five, never let anyone get past you, there is a lesson in there and they would look at me gratefully for the inspiration.

Biology was my pet subject, I’d say, I was so good in the practicals. Dad, what a hero.

I managed to keep it a secret long after my daughters grew up, finished college, got jobs, married, had children and all, because I had played this little con on them when they were growing up.

Thanks to that the little darlings slogged real hard over the years to get to the top. After all, if Dad was a topper, could they be far behind?

Then last week, my wife decided to clean up the old suitcase with old documents and photographs from way back when and this is always an exercise fraught with danger because you don’t know what will see the light of day like some overlooked letter to a girlfriend pre-marriage saying how much you care and it always comes back to bite you in the butt and suddenly my wife says, oh look, your father’s school reports, my goodness they must be nearly 50 years old.

Gimmethat, I say.

She passes it onto the girls.

Hmmm, says Senior.

What, what, what, says Junior.

Interrrr-essss-tingggg, she says, a huge grin on her face, look at this report it shows three Fs and a warning and you got 33 in math and you told us you were a whiz at it.

Show me, says Junior, now all excited, mygoodness, look at this, a C minus in Biology and that’s because he was so good at it, imagine if he wasn’t.

My wife joins in because wives love it when husbands are in a vice and she says, I always thought you came in the first five, seems to be a misprint here, it say 18 out of 24 and your teacher has said you have to try harder.

Here is one that says, “Unsatisfactory, must apply himself more,” says Senior, this is fun…here’s another one with a D and two Fs in Class IX, you told me you topped the class.

These are interim reports, I say all huffy and holding together tattered dignity, it was in the end of term exams that I showed my prowess.

Well, says Junior, your prowess was pretty underpowered, as prowess goes this was like three horsepower, your class X finals shows a low second division, you got a aggregate of 52 per cent and it says here you were in the third level percentile which is like really bringing up the rear.

And see this one, says my wife, glee adding a glow to her face, he got 38 in chemistry, 39 in geography and 40 in Algebra, like there is constant progress, ergo there is hope.

All those years we believed, says Senior, we took you at your word.

Yes, said Junior, dad the genius we thought.

My wife adds wistfulness in big dollops. If only I had known before we got married…she says.

And I yell, look at this card, I got a 77 in English, an A+, huh, how about that?

And Senior says, it’s faded, it looks more like a B minus and you crossed the line, mygoodness, you cogged a test.

For this weekend, I am staying in my little room, the lion licking his wounds.

Look at it this way, at least I helped others do well.