Question_mark_orange Kimberly from All Work & No Play Makes Mommy Go Something Something challenged me to write a post involving five lies and one truth. Then everyone guesses the truth in the comment section below and I pass the game on to someone else. But I, who would make a horrible fiction writer and prefer not to play by the rules, am choosing to alter the challenge. I tend to find outlandish truths much more interesting than outlandish lies, so I am going to write five truths and one lie. And since this is a baby blog, I will attempt to keep at least a couple of them on theme.

1. We decided to name our baby Mazzy because we read on the internet that it meant 'precious' in Hebrew. Then after the baby was born and the birth certificate was signed, we learned that the internet isn't always a trusty resource (who knew?) and it wasn't true. We have since been told that Israeli hipsters say something very similar to Mazzy as slang for good luck. Kind of like a shortened Mazel Tov. We'll take it.

2. My dad, who had a brief stint in the garment industry in his twenties but has made his living off of real estate for the past 30 years, has always maintained that he was the inventor of "the leisure suit". Although my sister and I have continued to spread this story as family legend, deep down we always believed that we were perpetuating a lie. Then one day The Discovery Channel called and asked if they could interview my father for a special on The History of American Fashion. My sister and I both turned to him and asked incredulously, "You really invented the leisure suit?" My father was, of course, floored that we had ever doubted him.

3. When I was little, there were two much older boys that lived next door. They used to torture me by doing things like locking me in their pitch black basement and feeding me cookies right before announcing they were poisoned. One time they told me that the Jack-O-Lantern was an actual thing (the Halloween equivalent of Santa or the Easter Bunny) who snuck into kid's rooms at night and stole all their candy. For years, I took my pillow case of candy to bed with me, first to protect it from the evil candy-stealing Jack-O-Lantern and later out of some sense of Halloween tradition.

4. In our last ultrasound, the picture made the baby look like she had an alarmingly large nose. I never showed that picture to anybody, my husband told me I was horrible person for even mentioning it (although I know he was just as alarmed), and I guiltily tried to find other pregnant women on the internet who had been faced with similar ultrasound baby profiles to commiserate. Mazzy's nose, thankfully, turned out just fine.

5. One spring, my mom started complaining that something was wrong with her throat. She said she felt a lump in the back of it. Every day, she would announce that it was getting bigger. Convinced she was rapidly developing a throat tumor, she went to the doctor. The doctor took one look, reached in with a popsicle stick and suceeded in dislodging the whole mass right then. What was it? Well, a few weeks before it had been Passover and somehow my mom had gotten a wad of Matzah stuck in the back of her mouth that had continued to collect food particles with each respective meal.

6. On a trip to Paris with my sister, due to her setting her watch incorrectly, we spent the entire week thinking it was an hour earlier than the actual time. This resulted in us being turned away from numerous bus tours, restaurant reservations etc. with the French explanation always being, "It is impossible to take the tour," "It is impossible to get seated for dinner," "It is impossible to enter the museum," etc. etc. We finally figured out why when we almost missed our flight home.

Which one is the big fat lie? Take your best guess in the comment section below. And now I'm officially passing the torch to Madame Paradox, a writer with much more flair for fiction than I.

LIE REVEALED AFTER THE JUMP


The lie is #3. Yes, those next door neighbor boys tortured me but no, I never believed in the Jack-O-Lantern. The fact that most people bought #3 tells me that I am either a really good liar or really bad at making stuff up. Kudos to KevinBlah and Myriah for getting it right. Although Myriah is my sister so that's not really fair.

In response to some of your comments…

Yes, the Matzah thing is disgusting but sadly for my Mom, it is 100% true. I didn't really think about how she would feel if I posted it but you're right, she's not gonna be thrilled. I'll use it as a gage to see if she is really reading my blog.

Yes, my dad invented the leisure suit. I would give you his name so you can google it yourself but that might lead to you finding out even more oddball facts about him so I will leave it be.

Just because you may have gotten the name in your head from a defunct band who had one good song in the 90s, it doesn't have to mean that the baby was named after said band. Mazzy Star is hardly in the same league as Sting. For the record, we needed an M, we liked the name, we looked it up online and found the perhaps faulty translation. Although, I have since googled it again and found not one but three sites that list Mazzy as meaning "precious" in Hebrew, so now I'm beginning to question whether it is indeed true afterall.

I love how nobody really questioned the ultrasound with the big nose. Apparently, acting horribly superficial sounds completely within my character.

And lastly, the Paris thing totally happened. And no, we didn't realize our mistake the first day, we figured out my sister's watch was set wrong in the cab ride to the airport on our way home, right before we separted to get on two different flights. So my sister and I got to put the pieces together and reflect completely on our own.