The Brains Behind This Great Big Lie

(When I was six, I had an itch in my nose. I was using the eraser end of a pencil to scratch it.)

Mom: “Don’t shove things up your nose. If you go far enough you will touch your brain and if anything touches your brain it will kill you. That is why it is inside of you.”

(I believed that until I was twelve when I got confused and asked my mom the following:)

Me: “If ‘something touches your brain, it will kill you,’ then how can there be brain surgeons? You have to touch the brain in order to perform surgery on it.”

Mom: “What the h*** are you talking about? You’ll live just fine if something touches your brain!”

(Apparently she had no recollection of the fib she had told me six years prior.)