My Daily Lie
I have a five-year-old son. He’s the light of my life, and means the world to me. I got divorced from his mother two years ago, and have a little less than 50% custody; it hurts me every day I don’t have him, but I make do. I do my best to always “do what’s right” when raising him. But lately, I’ve been lying to my son, regularly and often.
Pretty much every day I have him. You see, recently he has taken a shining to Pokemon. We watch the old ones on Netflix, he has a Cubone Pokeball made out of legos I bought him, and he loves Pikachu. I want to get him an old Nintendo 2DS or, ideally, a Switch, but can’t afford one right now. Because of this, I downloaded Pokemon Go.
He. Loves. It. I set him up with an account on my phone, and when he got sad about not having any friends, I made an account on my work phone so we can trade gifts. He has asked me to catch Pokemon he doesn’t have when I’m at work or when he’s at his mom’s house. I did for the first couple days, but seeing his face light up when he catches a new one made me stop.
So now I tell him I look for new ones but don’t find any, when in reality I just catch at least one he already has once a day to keep his streak going. I can’t stand to miss seeing his reaction when he gets a new one he hasn’t seen yet. It absolutely makes my day. I also sometimes catch multiple ones he already has just so he can get more candies and level his Pokemon up.
He thinks they just give him more because he’s a good trainer. I do not dispute this, and say that they must know how much he cares about his Pokemon and how he takes good care of them. I also told him that even though we don’t have a Pikachu, I’ll catch one if I ever see one. But I lied. I have one on my account, and purposefully didn’t get it on his.
You should see the way he lights up at catching a weedle, or a swablu, or a nosepass, or some other minor one. I don’t want to miss what his reaction will be when we finally get his Pikachu. I want to have him there to celebrate instead of just catch him one. I can’t wait until we get that little yellow guy. So I lie, every day, to my son. About Pokemon.